CHINA: China announced 96 new cases of SARS yesterday as the World Health Organisation said that outbreaks in the rest of Asia may have peaked, writes Jasper Becker in Beijing.
The mysterious flu-like virus has killed at least 326 people.
Mr David Heymann, director of the communicable diseases section of the WHO, said the spread of SARS had peaked in all countries known to have outbreaks.
Vietnam became the first infected country to be declared free of the virus, which has infected 5,300 people in nearly 30 countries.
"It seems that it has peaked in all places that we knew about on March 15th, except in China, and in China it's on the increase, unfortunately," said Mr Heymann, in Bangkok to brief Asian leaders who are meeting today in Malaysia for talks on the crisis.
The gathering will focus on increasing co-operation among 10 member-states of the Association of South East Asian Nations to introduce such measures as strict region-wide pre-departure screenings of travellers for symptoms.
Taiwan said it would close its borders to visitors from China, Hong Kong, Canada and Singapore for two weeks and quarantine residents returning from those places.
SARS apparently claimed its first victim in Indonesia.
Hong Kong said yesterday that SARS had killed another five people. But there were only 14 new cases, lower than the daily average of 20 to 30 reported in the past few weeks.
The Asian Development Bank cut its growth forecast for the region this year to 5.3 per cent, from the 5.6 per cent it expected in December, due to SARS and an uncertain global economic recovery.
However, financial markets rebounded in Hong Kong and Singapore after the WHO told Reuters that SARS had peaked in the two cities, traders said.
Hong Kong stocks closed up 0.3 per cent after falling to a 4½-year low in early trade, while Singapore shares gained 1 per cent. Beijing now seems to be at the centre of the struggle to contain the disease. The WHO has urged the city's acting mayor, Mr Wang Qishan, and Mr Liu Qi, the head of Beijing's Communist Party committee, to tell the public more about how to fight SARS, as cases topped 1,100.
Newspapers said 7,672 of the capital's nine million people were under strict quarantine in several residential buildings, a construction area and dozens of hospitals after the city enacted draconian measures to control the virus.
"If a hospital is closed, they should know why. Right now, they don't know where SARS is, so everyone is scared," the WHO statement quoted its representative in China, Mr Henk Bekedam, as saying. The city is now beginning to publish details of how many hospitals had how many cases, and on exactly which hospitals and other buildings were quarantined and the number of people quarantined.
As the city becomes increasingly desperate to bring the outbreak under control, it is paying more and more attention to the advice of the WHO experts.
Beijing increasingly resembled a ghost town as more and more public places closed and virtually all normal business had been suspended.