- (AP) -- Singapore's health ministry today issued quarantine
orders to 70 people who may have come into contact with a Taiwanese SARS
patient.
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- However, a Geneva-based spokesperson for the World Health
Organization, Maria Cheng, said it was unlikely that the severe acute respiratory
syndrome case could spark an epidemic.
-
- "It looks very much like an isolated event,"
Cheng said. "He was travelling to Singapore but he was asymptomatic
while there and, according to data we have, patients are not contagious
while asymptomatic."
-
- The Ministry of Health said in a statement that those
70 people may have been exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or
SARS, through contact with a 44-year-old Taiwanese researcher who visited
Singapore between Dec. 7-10.
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- The researcher was in Singapore for a medical seminar
at the Defence Medical and Environmental Research Institute, the statement
said.
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- Those who were possibly exposed must undergo home quarantine
until Dec. 19, the length of the incubation period of SARS, and will be
monitored three times a day by telephone, the statement said.
-
- Singapore has also sent a medical alert to all medical
practitioners, hospitals, national medical centres, and clinics advising
them to "step up their vigilance against SARS," the ministry
said.
-
- But, the ministry added that it sees no cause for public
alarm and that there are "no signs of new SARS cases in Singapore."
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