SARS - Two Australian women who returned from China

Main Category: Flu / Cold / SARS
Article Date: 15 Jan 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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Passengers aboard a plane which carried two flight attendants suspected of having the SARS virus were at not at risk of infection, health authorities said today.

The two women, who returned to Australia from China yesterday, were in isolation at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney after showing symptoms of the virus.

But New South Wales (Australia) Health communicable diseases acting director Paul Armstrong said early tests indicated the women did not have the disease.

'If these people had a high level of SARS we would take that more seriously but we think that there is such a low level of risk that there is no risk at all for people on that flight,' Mr Armstrong told Sydney radio 2GB.

Chinese health officials in Hong Kong have reported one confirmed case of SARS and two suspected cases in the Chinese province of Guangdong since SARS was said to be contained last July.

Last year, there were more than 8099 cases of SARS including nearly 800 deaths - most of them in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Toronto, Taiwan and Hanoi.

The one case of SARS confirmed in Australia was a foreign tourist who became very ill after arriving from Hong Kong.

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