Heavy-duty masks for health staff

By MATHEW DEARNALEY and AGENCIES

Health workers are likely to be issued with face masks next week as nurses are posted to airports to check for travellers suspected of bringing in the frightening Sars pneumonia.

The Government has bought 10,000 high-protection masks for distribution to health workers such as general practitioners, and has more on order, amid an international rush to stock up against an outbreak of Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

These are as well as hospital supplies of N95 masks, capable of filtering minute particles, of which the three Auckland health boards have a combined arsenal of 2600.

Officials continue to emphasise that none of the 2781 cases reported yesterday by the World Health Organisation, which have resulted in 111 deaths in six Asian states and Canada, have reached New Zealand.

Although just five of the Auckland District Health Board's 43 intensive care beds are equipped for nursing in negative-air pressure to prevent the spread of airborne diseases, spokeswoman Brenda Saunders said the region's hospitals could handle more than that number of cases.

A Health Ministry spokeswoman also said Sars was not believed capable of spreading through the air, other than through droplets, and WHO advice was that it could be caught only through being in close contact with a sufferer.

Even then, that person must have had visible symptoms such as high fever and breathing difficulty for about two days to be contagious, and incoming airlines were vigilant about not letting suspected sufferers board flights here.

Meanwhile, scientists say they are closer to proving that the syndrome is caused by a new virus from the coronavirus family, and have developed three experimental tests from which they hope to create a licensed version within a fortnight.

This advice from the United States Centres for Disease Control and European researchers comes as Governments tighten their defences against Sars, with Singapore using surveillance cameras to enforce home quarantine orders.

Indonesia has stopped 8000 workers travelling to Sars-hit countries while WHO officials seek permission to look further afield for the infection within China, where half of the deaths have occurred.

Reports of anti-Asian discrimination in Canada, where 10 people have died, prompted Prime Minister Jean Chretien to make a public show of dining in a restaurant in Toronto's Chinatown to try to dispel fears.

The gesture was welcomed by the American disease control agency's director, Dr Julie Gerberding, who said Sars was not a condition which was "in any way related to being Asian".

In this country, College of General Practitioners president Dr Helen Rodenburg said people who suspected they might have been exposed to the disease were advised to telephone doctors first to arrange visits rather than put others at risk by just turning up.

Plans could then be made to isolate them from other patients, or refer them to an assessment centre.

Brenda Saunders said suspected sufferers intercepted at the airport would be assessed at Auckland Hospital and transferred to the negative air-pressure beds at Green Lane Hospital if the disease was confirmed.

Health Ministry chief nurse adviser Frances Hughes said nurses recruited for airport surveillance duties had come mainly from private industry. ON THE