China confirmed on Monday its first Sars case since a world epidemic was declared over in July, and began a mass slaughter of civet cats on fears a new strain of the deadly virus may have jumped from wild animals to humans.
Health officials in the southern province of Guangdong said a virus gene sample from the Sars patient - a 32-year-old television producer - resembled that of a corona-virus found in civet cats, a Chinese culinary delicacy.
To eliminate a possible fresh source of the disease, the province where Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome originated in November 2002 planned to close wild animal markets.
"And we will kill all the civet cats in Guangdong markets, which number about 10,000," Guangdong health bureau official Feng Liuxiang told a news conference.
Guangdong also launched a "patriotic health campaign" to exterminate rats and cockroaches ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, which starts on January 22, when tens of millions of Chinese travel the country.
Adding to fears around Asia of a new outbreak, the Philippines announced that a maid who had been working in Hong Kong was a suspected Sars case.
She was being held in isolation with her husband and a doctor who initially treated her. Tests results would be available within two days, the health department said.
The Sars epidemic killed about 800 people around the world, including 349 in China. It brought Asian tourism and air industries almost to a halt and devastated the economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva confirmed the lone case but said it would not be grounds to consider a travel warning for China.
LITTLE ALARM IN BEIJING: The Chinese health ministry said in a statement the confirmation of the Sars case followed repeated tests by the Guangdong Centre for Disease Control and the China Centre for Disease Control and was in line with tests of two laboratories of the World Health Organisation.
Seventeen of the 81 people quarantined for having contact with the patient were still being isolated, it added.
The patient told doctors last month he had not left Guangzhou or eaten wild animal meat for a month before hospitalisation.
Financial analysts warned the news would hit airline and tourism stocks on Tuesday, while providing a lift to drug counters.
Xinhua news agency quoted an unnamed official at the centre for diseases control in Guangdong making the connection between the new Sars case and civet cats.
"We should begin the measures to prevent Sars beforehand and ban sales and eating of the animal in a bid to reduce the chance of contracting Sars virus," Xinhua quoted the official as saying.
Guangdong would set up highway inspection stations to keep wild animals from being brought in from other provinces, it said.
Witnesses saw police and health officials at markets inspecting cages filled with frozen, hairless civet carcasses gathered for destruction.
In Beijing, which became the epicentre of the outbreak last year, residents showed little alarm.
The Hong Kong Standard newspaper said a waitress had become the second suspected Sars case in Guangdong but provincial officials and hospitals denied the report.
Guangdong's campaign to eliminate pests brought to mind Mao Zedong's campaigns against rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows, which he denounced as the four evils.
Comments
Comments are closed.