Sars spreads across China

Sars spreads across China

Despite the precautions, Sars has spread out from southern China

Two people in China's remote northern region of Inner Mongolia have died from the mystery Sars illness, reinforcing fears about the spread of the disease.

The Chinese news agency reported that 10 cases were reported in the regional capital of Hohhot.

Confirmation that the infection had spread so far north came a day after a senior Chinese official disputed government assertions that the outbreak was under control.

Sars - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - has infected more than 3,000 people and killed 114 across the world since it fist appeared in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in November.

China said on Friday that 58 people had died in six provinces around the country and another 1,300 were ill.

Officials from the World Health Organisation (WHO) said the epidemic was being contained elsewhere in the world, but that they did not know what was going on in China outside Guangdong.

"The question is what is the dynamic of the epidemic elsewhere in China," said WHO head of global alert and response co-ordination, Mike Ryan.

Women in Beijing protect themselves

"The surveillance systems in many of these provinces are not strong enough to pick up all of the cases."

WHO has launched its first ever global alert because of the disease. Sars has created panic in much of Asia, the worst-hit region.

But the organisation says there are signs that Sars may have peaked.

David Heyman, head of communicable diseases, said that even in Hong Kong, which has the highest incidence after mainland China, there were signs that local health authorities were beginning to win the battle.

This was despite the fact Hong Kong reported 61 fresh cases on Friday, more than double the previous day.

Spreading from hospital

Singapore has warned its residents that Sars would not go away overnight, but said it was learning to live with the illness after reporting 39 new cases in a week.

As the government moved to calm nerves, an outbreak of the virus at Singapore's biggest hospital showed little sign of abating.

The government said on Friday that six more people were infected by Sars while either visiting or working at Singapore General Hospital, bringing the number of confirmed cases at the sprawling complex to 25 in a week.

Many worried Singaporeans avoided the usual crush of Saturday shopping for fear of getting infected.

Nine people have died of 140 confirmed cases in the city state.

The rash of new infections have been traced to an elderly man whose multiple ailments masked symptoms of Sars as he unwittingly spread the disease in the hospital.

The elderly man, dubbed a "super spreader", may have infected as many as 52 people, the government said.

'No isolation'

The Singapore Government said it had introduced tougher screenings of air travellers arriving from affected such as Hong Kong, Canada, Taiwan, Hanoi and Vietnam.

"We are now better able to cope with Sars," Minister for Education Teo Chee Hean said in a speech.

"But Sars will not go away overnight and we cannot be isolating ourselves."

Nurses and air force paramedics at the main airport, armed with the power to quarantine, are now taking the temperature of all travellers from Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province.