?Most Update Status Report of SARS in China Provided by Ministry of Health (MOH) (Chinese site)
Updated Disease Treatment Solution sent by MOH to all hospitals and publics. (Word Format, Chinese document)
Phone numbers:
- Beijing: Haidian District Disease Control and Prevention Center (Tel: 010-62551444, 24 hours)
- Shanghai: Xu Hui District Disease Control and Prevention Center (Tel: 021-64741079, 24 hours)
- Shanghai: Shanghai Emergency Disease Response Hotline 021-62750270 ,
- Guangzhou: Tianhe District Disease Control and Prevention Center (Tel: 020- 85517271, 24 hours)
- Ambulance (Dial: 120)
- Police (Dial: 110)
- MOH website at http://www.moh.gov.cn/
- China Disease Control and Prevention Center: http://www.chinacdc.net.cn
- WHO website at http://www.who.int
- ISOS website at http://www.internationalsos.com/
- CDC website at http://www.cdc.gov/
hi.. i got this news from a hk newspaper. http://scmp.com
PNEUMONIA OUTBREAK
A second victim is confirmed in Shanghai
BILL SAVADOVE in Shanghai
Shanghai yesterday announced its second confirmed case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) – the father of its first victim – as a team from the World Health Organisation (WHO) prepared to visit the city.
The 68-year-old man, surnamed Li, began to show symptoms four days after his daughter was admitted to hospital after returning from a business trip to southern China, the local government said. The Sars outbreak is believed to have originated in Guangdong province.
Meanwhile, the US consulate in Shanghai said it believed the number of suspected cases in the city stood at six – four Chinese nationals and two foreigners. A spokesman for the Shanghai Health Bureau declined to comment on the figures.
Shanghai officials said earlier this week that the city had only four suspected cases – two foreigners and two mainland residents. Health workers say the true number is far higher.
WHO experts are tentatively planning to visit Shanghai as early as the beginning of next week to investigate and offer advice to city health officials.
Diplomats said they had heard rumours of suspected cases in the cities of Ningbo and Suzhou, but health officials there denied there were any cases. If the rumours prove true, they will be the first known cases in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, which border Shanghai.
The Shanghai Health Bureau spokesman said the latest victim was confirmed to have Sars early yesterday. The authorities announced the first possible case on April 2, and confirmed it two days later. But the city did not confirm that her father had Sars until yesterday. The authorities said both patients were stable.
Time Magazine reports that when WHO visited the military hospitals in Beijing, the hospital authorities moved at least 40 patients to a nearby hotel! Some patients rode in ambulances all over town in order to avoid being seen by WHO officials!
Here is the latest from Time…
Beijing Hoodwinks WHO Inspectors
TIME Exclusive: Hospitals in the Chinese capital hid SARS patients from international health officials?
BY SUSAN JAKES
LOU LINWEI FOR TIME
Registration at Beijing’s No. 309 Hospital. Doctors say up to 40 SARS patients may have been moved from their wards
Special Report: Unmasking a Crisis
On Assignment: TIME’s Photographers cover the SARS Outbreak
CNN: China pledges truth on SARS
Friday, April 18, 2003
Before World Health Organization inspectors visited Beijing hospitals earlier this week, hospital officials removed dozens of SARS patients from their isolation wards and transferred them to locations where they could not be observed by the inspectors, doctors at those hospitals have told TIME. On Tuesday, just hours before the WHO’s inspection team arrived, more than 40 confirmed SARS patients at the capital’s No. 309 People’s Liberation Army Hospital were transferred out of their beds to the Zihuachun Hotel on the hospital grounds and at the China Japan Friendship Hospital 31 confirmed SARS patients, all doctors, nurses and hospital workers, were packed into ambulances and driven around Beijing for the duration of the WHO team’s visit, the doctors said.
These doctors’ revelations are the latest in a string of disclosures by local medical personnel that suggest the staggering extent of Beijing’s cover up of the deadly outbreak. China’s Ministry of Health came under fire for underreporting cases in the capital and elsewhere in China early last week when doctors around the country began to report caseloads of SARS victims that radically contradicted the ministry’s official figures for the disease. Citing concern over “rumors” of unreported SARS cases the WHO announced late last week that it had been granted permission to conduct a five-day inspection tour of the capital’s medical facilities in order to ascertain the truth about how Beijing was handling the outbreak.
On Tuesday, TIME received a letter from an informed local medical source charging that in order to prepare for the WHO team’s arrival, Beijing’s No. 302 People’s Liberation Army Hospital, already full to capacity with SARS patients, had emptied its two infectious disease wards of SARS patients. According to the source, “The 302 hospital originally had two wings devoted to infectious respiratory diseases where SARS patients were being treated. But now there are only a handful of SARS patients remaining, all of whom are already well on their way to recovering. Several severely ill SARS patients have been transferred to a third wing which is not a ward for infectious respiratory diseases. As for the other patients, I wonder where they’ve been moved.” The WHO team met with officials at the No. 302 Hospital, but never toured the wards.
Yesterday, a TIME reporter received a telephone call from another source saying that just after WHO team members said they would make a last-minute visit to the China Japan Friendship Hospital, patients were “rushed into ambulances and driven around the city for several hours.” The source, who refused to give her name, said that “nurses at the hospital were furious that they had been confined to ambulances with contagious patients.” She added that at the No. 309 Hospital on Tuesday SARS patients had been transferred to an “inn” on the hospital grounds.
Last night, a TIME reporter spoke by telephone with a doctor at the China Japan Friendship Hospital who confirmed this story. “Yes, what you’ve heard is true,” he told TIME. “We have 56 confirmed SARS patients at our hospital but the hospital has only reported 41 to the authorities. Among the 56 there are 31 doctors, nurses and hospital workers. It was these 31 who were put into the ambulances. The other SARS patients were in their beds for the WHO’s inspection.” According to the doctor, the staff at the China Japan Friendship Hospital were infected in late March while treating a Taiwanese SARS patient who later died of the disease. A spokeswoman from the hospital, surnamed Liu, refused to comment on the doctor’s story and told TIME’s reporter to call the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau. The Health Bureau referred TIME to a local English language SARS information hotline.
A doctor at the No. 309 Hospital also confirmed the source’s story. “We moved 46 of our SARS patients to the Zihuachun hotel on Tuesday,” he said, “There were about 10 SARS patients in the ward when the WHO team visited. The hotel is being disinfected now. I don’t think it will open again. It was going to be renovated anyway.” But when TIME called the No. 309 Hospital’s main office to ask about the transfer of patients, a man who refused to give his name said, “We are not answering any questions,” and then hung up.
A retired senior doctor who once treated high-ranking Communist party cadres also spoke with TIME last night and confirmed that Beijing is continuing to deliberately hide SARS cases. “I’ve seen an internal Ministry of Health report which puts the number of confirmed SARS cases in Beijing at between 200 and 300, based on accounts from individual hospitals,” she said, “Another internal document I’ve seen says that in the last 10 days there have been more than 100 new cases reported in Beijing.” Publicly, the Ministry of Health maintains that there have only been 37 SARS cases in Beijing.
Over the entrance of what used to be the China Japan Friendship Hospital’s emergency room is a blue and white banner that reads, “SARS Diagnosis Wing.” Seated at a table beneath the banner are three doctors wearing face masks, blue head covers, plastic goggles and disposable gowns. Not an inch of their skin is visible. One doctor rises to approach a TIME reporter. When asked about his hospital’s treatment of SARS patients he replies with mounting anger, “I can’t tell you any details because I don’t want to lose my job. All I can tell you that the government’s handling of this matter is absolutely irresponsible.”
-With reporting by Matthew Forney and Huang Yong/Beijing
I read about this report at CNN but could not link to any of Time’s sites tonight. Thanks to Caroline for pasting the full story here.
Disclaimer: I am taking this story as rumor only, and I believe other readers will do the same. : )
Thanks Mainlander, I am amused and also worried by all of this. It would be very nice if the Shanghainese authorities reveal the true statistics for this epidemic in Shanghai. My Godfather’s ayi’s relative has already died of SARS in Shanghai, and this lady has never travelled outside of Shanghai! That was weeks ago.
My husband and children will be evacuating back to America in a week’s time!
I can’t find my last post, but here is the news reported by Ming Pao Newspaper in Chinese and English.
國務院新聞辦下午在新聞發布會上公布,截至18日,北京的肺炎個案由44 個大幅增至339個。
公布稱,全國的非典型肺炎病例中,廣東1304例;北京339例;山西108例;內蒙古25例;廣西12例;湖南6例;四川5例;福建3例;上海及河南均為2例;寧夏1例。
三十一個省市自累積病例達1807例,已有79人死亡。其中北京市累計報告非典型肺炎病例339例,另有402例疑似病例。目前死亡人數有18人﹐已經治愈出院的33人。
在確診的人員中,醫務人員有24人,學生8人,外地人員28人﹐境外人士5人。疑似病例中﹐醫務人員41人﹐學生42人;外地人員21人;境外人士4人。
Translation
At a news conference this afternoon, The State Council information office announced the the number of confirmed SARS cases in Beijing has increased from 44 to 339. Around the nation, the latest figures are as follows: 1304 in Guangdong; 339 in Beijing; 108 in Shanxi; 25 in Inner Mongolia, 12 in Guangxi; 6 in Hunan; 5 in Sichuan; 3 in Fujian; and 2 each in Shanghai and Henan; and one in Ningxia. The total for 31 provinces and cities come up to 1807, and 79 deaths have been reported.
In Beijing, there are 339 confirmed cases, and 402 suspected cases. The death toll is 18, and 33 patients have recovered to date. Among the confirmed cases, there are 24 health care workers, 8 students, and 28 non-locals, and 5 foreigners. Among the suspected cases, there are 41 health care workers, 42 students, 21 non-locals, and 4 foreigners.
You last post is at http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20030419_sars_found_in_henan.htm
Thanks for providing the timely information and your translation – it will definitely help others who cannot read Chinese.
And they fired the Health Minister and the Mayor of Beijing!
Maybe we will get some real statistics the coming days in Shanghai finally!
Has China cancelled all foreign travel for students in its school? Please let me know if this is true.
Paul, there is no news about the cancelation of all foreign travel. It is restricted but not canceled. People can still go to the places they want – except some countries in the list – such as Malaysia, which has denied to issue visa to Chinese citizen. Tour to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand is paused.
It should be remembered that the SARS virus is most vulnerable after it leaves the host, but before it reaches its next victim. If a workplace has a strong flow of air coming into it from the outside and exiting some air at every office window, the majority of air born SARS virus would likely be blown outside, reducing the chance for transmitting the virus. The worst situation is to close up a workplace and hold any air born virus inside. If even one infected person were to spread the virus, it would have nowhere to go and the chance of infection would significantly increase. Air (Oxygen) and time is the worst enemy of any air born germ or virus.
If an adequate supply of air were not a possibility, then the use of a good ozone generator would kill off the large majority of all air born germs and virus without posing an additional health risk.
I am confident that the good Chinese people will win this battle and win the respect of the world in the process.
An American who is a Friend of China and the good Chinese People!
Tom, I am moved by your kind words for the Chinese people. I thank you for saying that. We are in the battle to fight against SARS now and I believe we can win it.
Hi,
There’s been recent news about SARS in Beijing. I’m workng on updating my site on SARS. I would like if anyone could email me so that I could post any stories about your SARS experience on our site: http://www.openscar.com
Our site has recently won the Childnet Academy http://www.childnetacademy.org
If you have any comments about our site, email me or sign our guestbook: http://www.openscar.com/guestbook.php
We would like to reach out our website to those in China and help Chinese cope with SARS by allowing you to post your stories on our site and publicize our site in China.
Hello,
Mr.Wang, could you tell me where I can find the English reports on the ozone generator and SARS?
Thanks!
Macao
Not often you can find such a nice site!
All is excellent! Thanks!