China's second suspected SARS case of the season

Main Category: Flu / Cold / SARS
Article Date: 09 Jan 2004 - 0:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

A waitress hospitalized in China's southern city of Guangzhou on Thursday was declared the country's second suspected SARS case of the season, the government announced.

The one-sentence announcement by the official Xinhua news agency didn't give any other details. But earlier reports said the 20-year-old woman worked in a restaurant in Guangzhou that served wild game.

Scientists say the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome may have jumped to people from animals.

Authorities in Guangzhou and surrounding Guangdong province have ordered the slaughter of thousands of civet cats - a local delicacy - and other animals seized from wildlife markets after tests suggested a link to an earlier SARS case.

The woman, whose name wasn't released, went to hospital Dec. 31 with a fever, according to the reports. She was isolated after tests showed possible inflammation in her lungs.

Phone calls to health authorities in Guangzhou on Thursday weren't answered. Guangzhou officials earlier in the week repeatedly denied reports in Hong Kong newspapers that the waitress was suspected of having SARS.

A spokesman in Beijing for the World Health Organization, Roy Wadia, said he didn't have any more information on the waitress's case.

Health authorities were investigating how the woman might have contracted the disease and were disinfecting her home and other places that she had been, the reports said.

Some 48 people who had 'close contact' with the waitress have been quarantined, the Southern Daily said. It said 52 others were 'under medical observation,' though it didn't give details.

'Up to now, none of those people has shown symptoms of the disease,' the newspaper said.

Word on the possible new case came after health authorities said China's first SARS patient of the new season, a 32-year-old television producer, had been released from hospital in Guangzhou after recovering from the illness.

The producer was hospitalized Dec. 20 and Chinese and international experts spent weeks testing samples from him before declaring that he was confirmed to have SARS.

The man, identified only by the surname Luo, was admitted to hospital Dec. 20 and released Thursday from the No. 8 People's Hospital, Xinhua reported.

'His condition improved daily with the conventional treatment,' the report said. It didn't give any other details.

Authorities had quarantined 81 people who had contact with the man, but say none has shown symptoms. Most have been released.

Meanwhile, officials say three members of a Hong Kong TV news team have fevers and coughs and were being tested for SARS after returning from China's southern mainland where they covered the SARS story.

The three men, employees of the TVB network, had been placed in an isolation ward a Queen Mary Hospital and were in stable condition, the hospital said in a statement.

They were being tested for both SARS and flu viruses, the statement said, without specifying when the results were expected.

It said X-ray tests on the patients have showed no signs of pneumonia.

TVB said in its morning newscast that the three men developed fever and coughing after travelling to China's southern province of Guangdong to cover the SARS case involving the TV producer.

The Hong Kong station said it disinfected its offices Wednesday.

Guangdong is where SARS emerged in November 2002 before spreading to dozens of countries and killing 774 people worldwide, including 44 in Canada.

Hong Kong is jittery about a possible re-emergence of the disease because it lies next to the Chinese province. The generic nature of SARS symptoms, including fever, coughing and shortness of breath, have led to several recent false alarms.

• Additional
• References
• Citations