China reports two confirmed SARS cases, two suspected cases

<br>BEIJING (AP) _ China confirmed Friday that two laboratory workers have contracted SARS and that the mother of one has died _ making her the first apparent SARS fatality in the country since July. Hundreds

Friday, April 23rd 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BEIJING (AP) _ China confirmed Friday that two laboratory workers have contracted SARS and that the mother of one has died _ making her the first apparent SARS fatality in the country since July. Hundreds of people have been quarantined.

Trying to prevent an epidemic, the government announced it would start disinfecting public buildings and take the temperatures of travelers at all ports of entry.

``Anyone who has a temperature over 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit) will be taken to the hospital,'' said a Health Ministry statement published in Chinese newspapers. ``No one will be exempt.''

The confirmed cases both had worked in laboratories in Beijing for China's Centers for Disease Control and were probably infected there, the Xinhua news agency said. They were identified as a 31-year-old man from Beijing and a 26-year-old woman in central Anhui province, the first cases confirmed in those areas since last summer.

A 20-year-old nurse in Beijing is also sick with a suspected case of SARS.

The mother of the woman in Anhui has died, the ministry said. She is believed to have contracted the illness from her daughter, a medical student who studied at the laboratory in Beijing from March 7 to 22.

The daughter was treated last month for viral pneumonia at Beijing's Jiangong Hospital, where she came into contact with the nurse who was identified as a suspected case.

``When the daughter was ill, the mother accompanied her all the time,'' the health ministry said in a statement on its Web site.

The mother was hospitalized April 8 with a fever and an unidentified pneumonia-like virus, the statement said. She died on Monday.

The women took several train journeys together between Beijing and Anhui and might have exposed many other people to the virus. Hospitals along the rail line have been put on alert to report any cases of pneumonia.

``Here it looks like we had human-to-human transmission and there's clearly a travel history where they might have exposed other people,'' said Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

The WHO is considering sending a team of experts to China to help officials there to trace the women's movements over the past few weeks, she said.

In Anhui, 117 people were quarantined and one person showed symptoms of fever _ a key symptom. In Beijing, 188 were quarantined and five reportedly had fevers.

In December and January, four cases were reported in the southern province of Guangdong, where the flu-like disease first emerged. All four patients recovered.

Health officials on Friday isolated at least five other people who reported suffering fevers _ a key symptom _ and were monitoring scores more.

SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, triggered a global health crisis last year that killed 774 people _ 349 of them in mainland China. More than 8,000 were sickened around the world. The disease subsided in China last summer.

China was harshly criticized for withholding information about SARS when it first broke out last year.

This time China will act quickly and will not withhold information, Vice Health Minister Zhu Qingsheng said at a meeting of Asian health ministers in Malaysia on Friday.

``We are prepared,'' Zhu said. ``We are confident that SARS will not spread like it did in the past.''

On Thursday the Health Ministry ordered local authorities to step up efforts to prevent SARS. Local authorities were told to resume filing daily status reports on the disease, even if they have no cases, it said.

Health workers were deployed on Friday at Hong Kong's airport and a railway station to check the temperatures of passengers arriving from the Chinese mainland.

When the SARS outbreak was at its peak, Beijing was the hardest-hit city in the world. Schools, cinemas and restaurants were closed to prevent crowds that might spread the virus. Thousands of people were quarantined in their homes.

On Friday, state-run newspapers gave blanket coverage to the Beijing case. Front pages carried photos of doctors covered head-to-toe in white protective suits talking to a woman in a hospital bed, identified as the 20-year-old nurse.