Pneumonia Outbreak Prompts Travel Warning in Asia

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Pneumonia Outbreak Prompts Travel Warning in Asia

March 14, 2003
By KEITH BRADSHER 




 

HONG KONG, March 13 - A mysterious outbreak of pneumonia
spread further in southeast Asia today, prompting Singapore
and Taiwan to warn their citizens against unnecessary
travel to Hong Kong, Hanoi, and China's Guangdong Province,
where most of the cases have occurred.

Doctors at laboratories in Hong Kong, Japan, and the United
States have been struggling without success to identify the
cause of the disease. The sickness causes flu-like symptoms
- including a high fever - and appears highly contagious,
at least for hospital workers who treat infected patients,
health officials around the region said.

The World Health Organization has been especially concerned
about the spread among hospital workers because it may make
them leery of caring for further patients if the disease
spreads. 

"It's a very serious situation," said Dick Thompson, a
spokesman for the World Health Organization in Geneva.
"It's serious because we don't know what the pathogen is
and because it's attacking hospital workers."

But Mr. Thompson cautioned that because laboratory
researchers could not isolate the cause of the sickness, it
remains unclear whether the dozens of cases in various
countries were caused by a single disease.

"This pathogen is turning out to be a tough thing to pin
down," he said. "Nothing is turning up, not a thing."

Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, Hong Kong's secretary of health,
welfare and food, said that 43 hospital staff had been
admitted to hospitals with symptoms of the sickness, and 29
had been found to show signs of pneumonia. An American
businessman who lives in Shanghai died of pneumonia at a
hospital here on Thursday.

The businessman had passed through Hong Kong to Hanoi,
where he fell ill, entered a hospital and was then
evacuated here when his condition deteriorated and the
disease began spreading through the hospital staff.
Officials in Vietnam said that 30 doctors and other
employees had fallen ill at the hospital where the man was
treated. 

The Vietnamese government, like Hong Kong's government, has
set up a special team of experts to try to contain the
outbreak. 

Dr. Yeoh pointed out at a press conference this afternoon
that there are 1,500 to 2000 cases of pneumonia each month
in Hong Kong, and that pneumonia is a common problem around
the world. But Dr. Yeoh said that the current outbreak was
troubling because its pattern of transmission appeared
consistent with a virus that travels as droplets through
the air. 

By contrast, bacterial infections are the most common
causes of pneumonia here, although so-called atypical
pneumonia cases also occur, triggered by influenza and
other respiratory viruses.

Seeking to allay concerns that might hurt the territory's
important tourism industry, however, Dr. Yeoh said that the
disease still appeared to be confined to medical workers
and was not spreading through the general population.
Hospital officials here acknowledged, however, that there
might be additional cases among family members of hospital
workers. 

Taiwan authorities announced after Dr. Yeoh's press
conference that a businessman had developed pneumonia and
his wife was developing flu-like symptoms following their
recent trip to Shenzhen, the mainland city adjacent to Hong
Kong, in China's Guangdong Province. The couple had passed
through Hong Kong on the way home.

Singapore's Ministry of Health announced today that nine
people there had fallen ill: three recent arrivals from
Hong Kong plus six people who cared for them, including two
hospital workers. 

While Taiwan mildly discouraged its citizens from taking
unessential trips to Hong Kong and Guangdong Province,
Singapore's Ministry of Health issued an unusually strong
warning to citizens there. "As a precautionary measure, the
ministry advises you to avoid travel to Hong Kong, Hanoi
and Guangdong province in China for the time being, unless
absolutely necessary," the ministry said at the end of a
statement announcing the illnesses there.

Singapore and Hong Kong are fairly similar city states that
compete fiercely for tourists and corporate headquarters,
however, and have a history of sometimes sharp criticism of
each other. 

China's Guangdong Province has acknowledged 305 cases
earlier this year, a third of them involving medical
workers. Mr. Thompson said that the Chinese government had
asked for technical assistance from the World Health
Organization in investigating the Guangdong outbreak a rare
request from Beijing, which prides itself on
self-sufficiency in technical expertise.

The World Health Organization is assembling experts to go
to China. The group already has six specialists in Hanoi,
Vietnam, to analyze the outbreak there, with more on the
way, and one in Hong Kong, Mr. Thompson added.

None of the people currently suffering from pneumonia have
been found so far to be infected with the avian influenza
that killed a man here and temporarily sickened his son
last month, although tests are continuing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/14/international/asia/14CND-HONG.html?ex=1048
670337&ei=1&en=fe4940eb6e20bc41



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