首页 新闻 体育 娱乐 游戏 邮箱 搜索 短信 聊天 天气 答疑 导航


新浪首页 > 新浪教育 > Precautions taken against SARS

Precautions taken against SARS
http://www.sina.com.cn 2004/01/19 10:45  Shanghai Daily

  China ratcheted up its precautions against the twin health threats of SARS and bird flu yesterday as it entered its peak travel period ahead of the lunar New Year.

  Vice Premier Wu Yi, who is also health minister, called on quarantine, railway and aviation officials to work together to prevent the possible spread of SARS, as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel home to rural villages for the holiday.

  The vice premier said the coming period will be critical for China's prevention of the diseases, and more efforts are needed to closely monitor the situation.

  In the fight against bird flu, authorities were searching markets for any poultry from flu-hit countries and publicly burned 800 pigs smuggled in from Vietnam.

  There have been no cases of bird flu reported on China's mainland, World Health Organization spokesman Roy Wadia said yesterday. The disease has killed at least four people in neighboring Vietnam.

  China's mainland has had three confirmed cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome this season, although the WHO has urged further testing of two of the patients to ensure they did in fact have SARS and not just a version of the common cold.

  Of the three patients, two have recovered and returned home, while the third is in stable condition in a hospital in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province.

  "No effort should be spared in guarding against the spread of the disease," the Ministry of Health said in a statement. "We mustn't be caught off guard or relax our vigilance."

  The central government has said anyone with a fever would be prohibited from boarding a train.

  China's mainland on Saturday confirmed its second and third cases of SARS, upgrading them from "suspected SARS cases." One patient was a waitress who had worked at a restaurant that served civet cats, a suspected source of the disease.

  The season's first confirmed case on China's mainland, a 32-year-old television producer, was released from a hospital last week after recovering from what health officials said may be a milder strain of the virus.

  The Ministry of Health said yesterday that a private businessman was still hospitalized and has had a normal temperature for 12 consecutive days.

  "None of the people in contact with him developed fever or showed any abnormal symptoms," said the ministry in its daily monitoring report on SARS.

  The patient was reported as a suspected SARS case on January 12 and confirmed of \having\ the disease on Saturday.

  The other newly diagnosed SARS case - the 20-year-old restaurant waitress - has already been discharged from hospital.

  The government of Guangdong, \where\ the disease emerged last year, said in a statement that SARS experts confirmed the two new diagnoses.

  "They concluded that the clinical symptoms and results of laboratory tests and X-ray tests were in line with a diagnosis standard recommended by the Ministry of Health for SARS," the statement said.

  But Roy Wadia, the WHO spokesman in Beijing, said the agency thought the confirmations were premature.

  In the case of the businessman, blood samples were taken from him three days apart instead of at least seven - a timeframe that would be long enough to measure a significant rise in antibodies for any disease, Wadia said.

  "At this time it's difficult to tell what their antibodies are responding to. It could be the SARS coronavirus or a type of common cold virus," he said. "We encourage a little more testing to be done to be 100 percent sure of the outcome."

  Both the WHO and Chinese experts have said that the three latest cases have been milder, with patients \having\ fevers for shorter periods and, unlike many people stricken earlier, not needing respirators to breathe.

  The waitress, who was identified by her surname, Zhang, was discharged from the hospital on Saturday morning, and 100 people who had contact with her were released from quarantine and medical observation.




英语学习论坛】【评论】【 】【打印】【关闭
Annotation

新闻查询帮助



文化教育意见反馈留言板电话:010-62630930-5178 欢迎批评指正

新浪简介 | About Sina | 广告服务 | 招聘信息 | 网站律师 | SINA English | 会员注册 | 产品答疑

Copyright © 1996 - 2004 SINA Inc. All Rights Reserved

版权所有 新浪网
北京市通信公司提供网络带宽