China Clamps Down After SARS Found
China confirmed two cases of SARS on Friday and said the mother of one patient has died, apparently the first SARS fatality in the country since July. Hundreds of people have been quarantined.
Trying to prevent an epidemic, the government announced it would start disinfecting public buildings. CBS News' Celia Hatton reports Chinese health authorities, eager to show they're serious about containing the highly-contagious disease, also have ordered temperature checks at all of China's borders, warning that anyone with a fever will be sent to a hospital.
The confirmed cases both had worked in laboratories in Beijing for China's Centers for Disease Control and were probably infected there, the official news agency Xinhua said. They were identified as a 31-year-old man from Beijing and a 26-year-old woman in central Anhui province, the first cases confirmed in those areas since last summer.
A 20-year-old nurse in Beijing is also sick with a suspected case of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.
The mother of the woman in Anhui has died, and is believed to have contracted the illness from her daughter.
"When the daughter was ill, the mother accompanied her all the time," the health ministry said in a statement on its Web site.
The mother was hospitalized April 8 with a fever and an unidentified pneumonia-like virus, the statement said. She died on Monday.
The daughter was treated last month for viral pneumonia at Beijing's Jiangong Hospital, where she came into contact with the nurse who was identified as a suspected case.
In Anhui, 117 people were quarantined and one person showed symptoms of fever — a key symptom. In Beijing, 188 were quarantined and five reportedly had fevers.
In December and January, four cases were reported in the southern province of Guangdong, where the flu-like disease first emerged. All four patients recovered.
SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, triggered a global health crisis last year that killed 774 people — 349 of them in mainland China. More than 8,000 were sickened around the world.
China was harshly criticized for withholding information about SARS when it first broke out last year.
This time China will act quickly and will not withhold information, Vice Health Minister Zhu Qingsheng said at a meeting of Asian health ministers in Malaysia on Friday.
"We are prepared," Zhu said. "We are confident that SARS will not spread like it did in the past."
On Thursday the Health Ministry ordered local authorities to step up efforts to prevent SARS. Local authorities were told to resume filing daily status reports on the disease, even if they have no cases, it said.
Health workers were deployed on Friday at Hong Kong's airport and a railway station to check the temperatures of passengers arriving from the Chinese mainland.
When the SARS outbreak was at its peak, Beijing was the hardest-hit city in the world. Schools, cinemas and restaurants were closed to prevent crowds that might spread the virus. Thousands of people were quarantined in their homes.
On Friday, state-run newspapers gave blanket coverage to the Beijing case. Front pages carried photos of doctors covered head-to-toe in white protective suits talking to a woman in a hospital bed, identified as the 20-year-old nurse.