- PARIS (AFP) - The death toll
from a baffling respiratory illness that has hit Southeast Asia rose to
seven as the global health scare added several more European countries
to its victim list.
-
- But hopes grew of medical progress against the pathogen
behind the disease, as lab sleuths identified it as a likely member of
a well-known viral family and the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared
international containment measures were working.
-
- The disease has so far killed three people in Hong Kong,
and two each in Canada and Vietnam, including the death there Wednesday
of a 65-year-old French anaesthetist who had treated the very first case
in the epidemic.
-
- Some 270 suspected or confirmed infections have been
reported, according to a toll compiled by AFP from WHO figures and local
health authorities.
-
- Several European countries announced Wednesday that the
disease had reached their shores, chiefly through travellers who picked
up the infection on trips to the affected Asian region.
-
- And 11 cases have been reported in the United States,
the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said Wednesday.
-
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is the term
coined by the WHO to describe a disease whose flu-like symptoms of high
fever and chronic fatigue can also develop into a severe and sometimes
lethal pneumonia.
-
- It was first detected on February 26 in Hanoi in a 48-year-old
American who had arrived on a business trip on a flight from Shanghai and
Hong Kong and later died.
-
- But the condition of three Singaporeans, who were the
first cases of the disease in Europe, was steadily improving Wednesday
and they were set to leave an isolation ward in the German city of Frankfurt,
doctors said.
-
- They had left a flight from New York bound for Singapore
on a stop in Frankfurt after exhibiting symptoms of the disease.
-
- In Britain, a businessman from Manchester was diagnosed
with the disease Wednesday following a business trip to Asia, while another
suspected case has been identified in the Welsh city of Swansea.
-
- Switzerland reported seven cases, including an entire
family of four with children aged four and six, who have been isolated
at home and were said to be making satisfactory progress.
-
- Experts on Wednesday stood by their insistance that there
was no need for travel restrictions and stressed infection only resulted
from close contact with victims.
-
- But this failed to calm nerves in Hong Kong and many
other Asian cities, where disposable face masks flew off the shop shelves
and the market stalls.
-
- "I'm wearing a mask because I'm scared. I'm only
22 and I don't want to die," said Wong Kin-man, a young man standing
outside the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong's Sha Tin district where
victims, including medical staff, were being treated.
-
- Better news, though, came in from the medical front.
-
- Two laboratories, one in Germany and in the other in
Hong Kong, have evidence suggesting the culprit is a member of the paramyxoviridae
family of viruses, a pathogenic group that includes measles and mumps,
WHO experts said.
-
- A virus of this type "is rather slow-moving, rather
restricted to families and hospitals, not a rip-roaring affair, but still
very nasty," John Oxford, a renowned British virology professor, told
the BBC.
-
- "There are no anti-viral drugs against this family
of viruses and there are no vaccines available. It will be a question of
several years' work.
-
- "But it is not fantastically infectious, so I wouldn't
expect there to be a massive outbreak in other parts of the world."
-
- But the virus has meant the prestigious French sports
daily L'Equipe has broken the paper's tradition of sending a correspondent
to every Formula One race since 1953.
-
- Editorial director Claude Droussent said he had banned
reporters from covering the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday due to the "medical
risks" attached to the disease.
-
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