China Confirms SARS Case in Southern Guangzhou
Mon January 5, 2004 03:39 AM ET
By Nick Macfie
BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Monday confirmed that a 32-year-old television
producer in southern Guangdong has SARS, the country's first case since a
world epidemic was declared over in July.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome originated in Guangdong in November 2002 and went on to kill 800 people around the world, including about 350 in China, bringing Asian tourism and air industries almost to a halt.
"It was confirmed after repeated tests by Guangdong Center for Disease Control and the China Center for Disease Control and the result was reviewed and in line with tests of two WHO SARS laboratories," the Health Ministry said in a statement.
Seventeen of 81 people who had had close contact with the patient were being held in quarantine, it added.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it would issue a statement shortly which also confirmed the SARS case. Last week, it said even if the case were confirmed, it would not be grounds to consider a China travel warning.
In a campaign to stop another mass SARS outbreak, China announced a plan to kill thousands of civet cats and try to wipe out rats and cockroaches.
Guangdong planned to kill about 10,000 civets and to close wild-animal markets to eliminate a possible source of the disease, state media said.
"We will start a patriotic health campaign to kill rats and cockroaches in order to give every place a thorough cleaning for the Lunar New Year," Guangdong health bureau official Feng Liuxiang was quoted by state media as saying.
Chinese New Year begins on January 22.
"And we will kill all the civet cats in Guangdong markets, which number about 10,000," he said in a drive reminiscent of Mao Zedong's pest eradication campaigns.
In the Philippines, a woman suspected of contracting SARS while working in Hong Kong had been isolated but health officials said on Monday it was too early to confirm if she had the virus. The woman's husband and her doctor had also been isolated.
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