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MYSTERY SUPERFLU
China admitting
SARS cover-up
More than 7 times as many cases
in Beijing than previously reported

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: April 20, 2003
11:32 p.m. Eastern

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

There have been more than seven times as many SARS cases in Beijing than previously reported, China's government is admitting.

Health authorities conceded last night there had been 339 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Beijing alone, with 18 people having died in the capital. There are an additional 402 suspected cases.

SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Ontario have implemented quarantine measures. Officials in Singapore are now considering installing Web cameras in the homes of people under quarantine to make sure they don't leave, and Vietnam said it might bar visitors from countries with evidence of the mysterious flu-like disease.

In the United States, there now are about 150 cases in 30 states, with no deaths.

President Bush has given federal health officials authority to quarantine Americans who contract the illness. Officials said there were no immediate plans to use the emergency powers.

Hours after the Chinese cover-up was revealed, the government announced the firing from key Communist Party posts of Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and the Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong.

China's deputy health minister, Gao Qiang, said the weeklong May Day holidays would be canceled amid fears that the massive movement of people and the crowding of tourists in popular destinations could cause SARS to spread.

Chinese authorities have previously admitted to only 44 cases and four fatalities in Beijing, but came clean last night after weeks of intense pressure from the World Health Organization.

China's health ministry said the nationwide death toll from SARS stood at 79, with 1,807 confirmed cases. Previously, the national figures were reported as 67, and 1,500 respectively.

Worldwide the mysterious superflu has now killed almost 200 people – with Hong Kong suffering its blackest day since the crisis began, with 12 deaths on Saturday alone. The latest deaths took its toll to 81, the most of any country, just a day after officials claimed the outbreak would stabilize.

In Beijing, doctors revealed they had been ordered by authorities to hide SARS patients from WHO officials in an attempt to downplay the extent of the epidemic.

Three new SARS cases were detected yesterday in eastern Zhejiang province, where no cases had previously been reported.

Chinese health authorities announced that all domestic air passengers would have to sign a declaration stating that they had no SARS symptoms before being allowed to board their aircraft.

A Hong Kong newspaper yesterday reported that a British female member of an around-the-world yacht race team was suspected of contracting the virus in the territory and had been isolated.

Canada yesterday announced its 14th death from the flu-like disease, while Singapore has also reported another death, taking its toll to 14 and causing Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong to suggest the city-state could be facing its worst crisis.

A Singapore food market has been ordered to close after three people who worked there contracted the SARS virus, threatening the government's battle to contain the disease to hospitals. A taxi driver who ferried one of the workers to the wholesale vegetable market has also been infected.

Elsewhere, Vietnam is considering sealing its border with China, India confirmed its second SARS case, while in Indonesia, a British man infected with the disease has broken quarantine and fled to Hong Kong.

Indonesian authorities deployed the army's disaster brigade at major entry points in a bid to stop SARS from spreading throughout the archipelago.

Indonesia's army has sent up to 10 personnel to each major entry point around the country to help nurses and doctors conduct health checks after the unidentified 47-year old British citizen fled the country last Friday. He had been released from the hospital and ordered to stay at home.

Malaysian news reports said hotel workers faced lay-offs as room occupancy rates plunged because of the SARS outbreak.

The Malaysian human resources minister said yesterday that occupancy rates at hotels in Kuala Lumpur had plummeted from 65 percent full to about 33 percent since the outbreak began, while bookings on Malaysia's resort islands were as low as 20 percent.

Australia has officially notified the World Health Organization of only three probable cases of SARS. The three, all children, came to Australia earlier this month to visit relatives, arriving from Toronto, Canada.

No surprise there. The Health Minister and a Mayor over there have both been fired but there's no doubt that both of them are political scapegoats. Damn, I'm worried. :(

Well duuh. Not directed at you MagiK. ;) A very contagious virus and the Chinese government say that there is no danger. :rolleyes:

even here in the philippines... because if people really knew... all the business on the country will suddenly get broke... man... the panic and all that... tsktsk

its strange. really bad viral things are happening yet all i keep wondering is how you pronounce Mayor Meng Xuenong's last name. oh well.

sounds like a pretty nasty thing to be going around. doesn't bode well for me and my record of getting ill.

Quote:

Originally posted by MagiK:

Singapore has also reported another death, taking its toll to 14 and causing Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong to suggest the city-state could be facing its worst crisis.

A Singapore food market has been ordered to close after three people who worked there contracted the SARS virus, threatening the government's battle to contain the disease to hospitals. A taxi driver who ferried one of the workers to the wholesale vegetable market has also been infected.

This whole thing grieves me. :(

Quote:

China Announces SARS worse than they let on

Ooo BIG surprise there... :rolleyes:

they probably don't announce such news earlier because they are afraid of losing face.

Quote:

APRIL 22, 2003
Sars sackings
Scapegoats won't help solve problem

By Ching Cheong
EAST ASIA CORRESPONDENT

CHINA must get to the root of the Sars problem if it hopes to restore international confidence after the country's mishandling of the outbreak.

Its sacking on Sunday of two senior officials - Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing mayor Meng Xuenong - for the debacle is not good enough. The Sars saga is a classic example of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) making the fatal mistake of putting its image above all else, including the lives of its people.

A well-placed source told The Straits Times that the CCP put out a circular last October, urging the media to help create a favourable political environment for the 'successful convening of the party's 16th National Congress' in November and the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) last month. The media were to avoid 'negative news', including the outbreak of flu, pneumonia and other epidemics.

Therefore, when the Sars epidemic broke out in Guangdong last November and coincided with the party congress, it was covered up.

The former party boss for the province, Mr Li Changchun, had a vested interest in doing so. He was slated to be named to the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, the top decision-making body. The Sars outbreak, coming at a bad time, could well foil his promotion.

Four months later, when the contagion spread to Beijing, the 10th National People's Congress was under way. According to Ming Pao Daily News, disgraced mayor Mr Meng has admitted that when the epidemic broke out in the capital, he was mindful of the party's stipulation to maintain a 'stable political environment'. Hence his decision to cover up.

Following his sacking, there have been calls for similar action against Mr Li. If officials as senior as Mr Li were indeed sacked for dereliction of duty, it would signal a genuine break from the government's past practice of covering up bad news.

It is noteworthy that President Hu Jintao decided to sacrifice Mr Meng, a loyal follower, in order to bring down Health Minister Zhang.

Mr Zhang had been ex-president Jiang Zemin's personal doctor since the late 1980s when the latter was still Shanghai mayor, and owed his rise to Mr Jiang's support.

Beijing observers said the move showed that Mr Hu did not dare remove only Mr Jiang's man even though Mr Zhang had caused great public indignation by telling blatant lies. To remove a supporter of Mr Jiang, he had to sacrifice one of his own men too.

Yet the observers gave credit to Mr Hu for his resolve in getting rid of mediocre officials.

Many also fault the CCP for resorting habitually to secrecy as the first step in crisis management. This practice is steeped in CCP tradition, believing that 'negative news' should not be published lest it spark panic and stir unrest.

While this might work in a closed society where interaction is limited by the lack of communication tools, it would no longer work in a China of the Internet age.

Furthermore, maintaining secrecy over an issue of grave public concern serves only to highlight the authorities' irresponsibility.

International pressure piled on China not because it was the source of Sars but because the CCP adopted a highly irresponsible attitude towards the issue, resulting in the contagion spreading and threatening lives far beyond Chinese borders.

For now, China is reaping the bitter fruit of a patently anachronistic system and bad crisis management.

Unless it is seen to address this basic issue earnestly, by taking obvious and meaningful political reform, the international community has reason to doubt China's words.

It isn't the first time China kept a secret that cuased a lot of deaths...SARS doesn't even come close yet to the massive starvation of nearly 20 million people in the late 60's. They kept it secret that they couldn't feed their people, and millions upon millions of their people died of starvation, when all they really had to do is ask for help...the US at the time was experiencing record crops and had huge surplusses.

When will Governments realize that keeping THIS kind of stuff secret only makes things worse?