- SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore
sounded the all-clear after its latest SARS scare on Saturday, lifting
mandatory home quarantine orders on 75 people who came into contact with
a visitor from Taiwan with the deadly flu-like virus.
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- The health ministry in the Southeast Asian city-state,
the only other country to report a case since an outbreak that killed hundreds
of people worldwide was pronounced over in July, said six people who fell
ill did not have SARS.
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- In Taiwan, initial findings showed that the military
scientist diagnosed with SARS was likely to have contracted the virus on
December 6, a day before he left for Singapore, as he tried to disinfect
a trash bag in his lab.
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- Singapore's health ministry said 75 people who came into
contact with the scientist during his four-day visit to the city-state
had been released from 10 days home quarantine overnight.
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- "Everyone who was on home quarantine in line with
the 10-day virus incubation period was released from quarantine at midnight
and can go back to normal activities immediately," a spokeswoman said.
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- To date, no one has development a vaccine against Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), or a cure.
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- The Taiwan case is only the second since the World Health
Organization web sites) (WHO) declared in July that the last outbreak of
the disease was over -- and both have been traced to laboratories.
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- A 27-year-old Singaporean medical student who tested
positive for the potentially lethal disease after a laboratory accident
in September 9 has since recovered.
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- Singapore was the first city to begin mass quarantines
in the last SARS outbreak, isolating 8,000 people, monitoring some with
cameras, and threatening jail time and fines if they left home.
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- LABORATORIES
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- The 44-year-old Taiwan scientist tested positive for
SARS this week, fanning fears of a resurgence of the disease in Asia, which
bore the brunt of a virulent outbreak of the virus earlier this year. The
man is now in stable condition.
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- After emerging in southern China in late 2002, SARS infected
8,000 people in nearly 30 countries, killing about 800, mostly in China,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Canada. Many of Asia's economies were
battered.
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- Of the 75 quarantined this time in Singapore, six had
fallen ill and were admitted to the city state's Comunicable Disease Center,
the ministry spokeswoman said. "All the six have been diagnosed as
non-SARS. They remain well but are being kept under observation,"
she added.
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- Although criticized by some as draconian, Singapore's
measures to contain the spread of the virus earned the nation of four million
won praise from the WHO for bringing the outbreak under control.
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- "In the latest outbreak what Singapore has done
has WHO's full support and we congratulate them on the swift conclusion
to this scare," Peter Cordingly, WHO spokesman, said in a telephone
interview from Manila.
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- Since the first outbreak of SARS, when Asian countries
exhibited varying degrees of efficiency in handling the crisis, the WHO
has stepped up its long-standing encouragement of cooperation between laboratories
working to create vaccines.
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- "We always said that if there were a new infectious
disease, labs should work together. And they did work together," Cordingly
said, adding that the labs' cooperation had slackened.
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- "Since the outbreak ended in July, an element of
competition and commercial rivalry seems to have been introduced into the
scenario," he added.
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- "We understand this, but we're hoping we can return
to the days of full cooperation between the member labs," he said.
(Additional reporting by Alice Hung in Taipei)
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