- HONG KONG -- The battle to
contain the respiratory disease known as SARS looked grimmer than ever
Friday after a World Health Organization official warned that it may be
too late to stamp out the virus in China and in other developing countries.
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- Adding to the downbeat assessment Friday, Jeffrey Koplan,
a former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said that even with
the best efforts by leading scientists, the disease will probably never
be eradicated. More than two dozen countries are grappling with varying
outbreaks of the flulike illness, which had killed 274 worldwide and sickened
4,649 as of Friday.
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- Across Asia, the economies of SARS-affected countries
have been hard hit, and many residents are angry with their governments'
failure to stem the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome or with
the perceived draconian measures to do so.
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- In Hong Kong, the acting hospital authority chief, Ko
Wing-man, offered to resign after local media castigated the government
for taking inadequate measures to protect health workers, the largest group
infected in the region. In Beijing, residents contended that the pendulum
shift from a cover-up by officials to a crackdown in a week is feeding
hysteria.
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- With infections now confirmed in two-thirds of China's
provinces and mounting daily, "hope dwindles" for wiping out
the disease, WHO virologist Wolfgang Preiser said from Shanghai. Even in
"Singapore and Hong Kong, very rich places, they still have problems.
We are worried about the spread to poor provinces, maybe countries such
as India and Bangladesh," where "we don't think they have the
capacity to stem the tide once it's introduced."
-
- "It may have happened already," he said.
-
- SARS resembles pneumonia, with symptoms of fever, a dry
cough, and difficulty in breathing. Hong Kong and U.S. researchers have
linked it to a coronavirus, a relative of the common cold.
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