Saturday, March 22, 2003

Mystery disease infects more people in Hong Kong

HONG KONG (AP) - More than 200 people in Hong Kong have now contracted a mystery disease, and one more victim has died, officials said Saturday as health chiefs from Hong Kong and China discussed ways to cooperate in the fight against infectious illnesses.

Meanwhile, Chinese Health Minister Zhang Wenkang said Saturday there was no proof that severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, spread from the mainland to Hong Kong, despite widespread suspicions of a link.

A Chinese medical professor who visited Hong Kong in February infected six others in a hotel, and they then spread the disease in Hong Kong and several countries.

The professor got sick in China and the World Health Organization has been working to determine whether an earlier outbreak in southern Guangdong province and the latest outbreak _ which has killed 10 _ are linked.

Zhang acknowledged doctors in Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong, were puzzled during the outbreak described as atypical pneumonia that killed five and sickened more than 300.

When people started getting sick in November, health workers in Guangdong "had no idea what they were dealing with,'' Zhang told reporters after meeting here with Hong Kong health chief Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong and the WHO's Western Pacific director, Dr. Shigeru Omi.

"When they reported cases, they couldn't tell which ones were SARS and which ones were regular flu,'' Zhang said.

Hong Kong authorities said Friday that they wanted better cooperation from their mainland counterparts in tracking the disease, and this was apparently discussed Saturday, although neither side gave any details.

The most recent SARS victim who died in Hong Kong was from the Prince of Wales Hospital, where the largest number of the territory's patients have been infected. The man was in his 70s and also had blood disease, so it was not immediately certain what killed him, said Dr. Ko Wing-man, spokesman for the Hospital Authority.

If the man who died was killed by SARS, he would be Hong Kong's seventh fatality in the outbreak.

Ko told reporters Saturday that 210 people in Hong Kong have been sickened with SARS, up from 197 cases that had been reported as of Friday.

Three Hong Kong schools have been closed temporarily and are being disinfected after five students came down with the disease.

But officials said the students had caught the illness from family members, their cases were not directly linked and there was no need to shut all schools in the territory. Two other schools, each with one infected student, opted to stay open.

The WHO has counted 350 cases of SARS globally and said its 10 victims included six confirmed cases from Hong Kong, plus two who died in Vietnam and two who died in Canada. The disease was spread in Vietnam and Canada by people who caught it here from the professor.

At Vietnam's Hanoi French Hospital, where the mystery illness has sickened about 35 staff members, doctors said seven patients were well enough to be discharged, but they were waiting for approval from the Ministry of Health.

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