US: The United States has announced it is cutting back its diplomats throughout China, while Canada and other countries cancelled international events over an outbreak of a deadly virus that has spawned a global health crisis.
The US, which earlier in the week said it would cut diplomatic staff in Hong Kong and the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has extended that decision to all of China. The US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Richard Armitage, said he intended to put the US embassy in Beijing on "authorised departure" status, meaning non-essential diplomats and all embassy dependants would be offered free flights out.
A World Health Organisation (WHO) team is continuing its hunt for clues in southern China, the origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which hits victims who are already sick the most severely. With no medical proof yet of what causes the deadly flu-like disease or how it is spread, the WHO has issued a worldwide warning against travel to Guangdong province, where the disease appears to have started last November, and neighbouring Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong yesterday, authorities feared a new outbreak among high-risk medical staff after more than 10 doctors at one hospital had fallen ill in the last few days. The city's business life has been severely affected as people stay away from crowded places, a situation mirrored in other countries with SARS.
The number of possible SARS cases in the US has reached 100, health officials said yesterday.
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in said Atlanta, Georgia that so far no one had died. The most-affected US regions are California, with 24 cases, and New York, with 16, the CDC said. The remaining cases are distributed throughout 26 other US states.
The disease has killed one more person in Canada, bringing the death toll to at least 81 and infections to more than 2,300 worldwide. Russia also recorded its first suspected case when a Russian sailor flew in from China to Vladivostok with similar symptoms, doctors said.
In France's largest airport, Charles de Gaulle, workers became increasingly worried at the sight of masked passengers arriving from Asia and called for better health protection.
Late on Thursday, Canada said it would cancel a medical convention by the American Association for Cancer Research because some doctors, especially those caring for SARS patients, feared they could spread the disease.
SARS continues to spread but not as fast as it seemed a week ago, when public panic began rising. Canada, the third-worst affected place so far after China and Hong Kong, announced hospitals outside Toronto and its surrounding area could reinstate all surgical services and outpatient clinics, but would maintain SARS screening.
Patients brought down by the virus quickly end up in intensive care and the sheer numbers plus the infectious risk to key medical staff can put an enormous strain on hospitals.
Hong Kong's rate of daily infections has also fallen back to 20 to 30 new cases a day, after it was hit with the biggest known outbreak in one place a week ago. More than 200 people were infected at the Amoy Gardens housing estate, who were then evacuated and isolated in special camps.
The death rate so far has been 3-4 per cent, but patients in areas without good medical facilities face a much higher mortality risk, doctors say.
Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country and vulnerable to an epidemic across its vast but poor areas, has declared SARS a dangerous, infectious disease, opening the way for tough precautionary measures. Three people in the country are under observation, suspected of having the virus.
Anxious to keep the disease at bay, a growing number of countries have advised citizens not to travel to affected areas.
Hong Kong's Cable Television yesterday reported on Friday that authorities in Shenzhen, a Chinese city bordering Hong Kong, had reported its first death and that 33 people had contracted the disease up to Thursday.
New Zealand meanwhile is trying to heal strained relations with China after a delegation was turned away from a conference due to fears some might have SARS. New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Mr Phil Goff, said the decision to exclude 43 Chinese officials from the conference in Masterton after they arrived in the country on Wednesday was driven by uninformed fears about the virus. - (Reuters, AFP))