Warning on Sars paranoia

By ANGELA GREGORY

A national travel agency is warning against aircraft paranoia with nervous travellers cancelling holidays to areas where the pneumonia-like disease Sars has not reached.

Flight Centre is reporting some of its clients are shying away from any travel by plane, not just those flights destined for the most risky destinations.

The Ministry of Health yesterday extended its travel warnings to all of mainland China including the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Hanoi (Vietnam) and Toronto (Canada).

At least 95 people around the world have been killed and infections total more than 2600.

People planning elective or non-essential travel to those areas should postpone their travel until further notice, the ministry said.

Flight Centre managing director Graeme Moore said Sars had created panic among New Zealand travellers that far outweighed the risks.

Mr Moore said Flight Centre had seen cases where travellers had gone to considerable expense and effort to change their travel plans purely because a "wave of paranoia" had set in.

"We've had cases of people cancelling trips to Rarotonga or Fiji because of Sars, yet these are clearly non-affected areas."

He said a substantial number of people were taking the fear of contracting the disease to the extreme.

Although agents would continue to advise travellers of the latest information relating to the issue, Mr Moore urged people to keep as up to date as possible, and consider the risks carefully.

"We understand that some people now feel uncomfortable travelling to any destination, but there are some who are acting hastily on insufficient information and as a result may end up out of pocket and inconvenienced for no reason."

While airlines, tour operators and other travel suppliers had in general been very understanding when it came to travellers cancelling or delaying travel to affected areas, they were less sympathetic when it came to non-affected areas, he said.

Flight Centre, with some airlines and other travel suppliers, had waived cancellation and date change fees where the clients were booked to go to an affected area.

The president of the Travel Agents Association, James Langton, confirmed people seemed to be generally delaying any overseas travel until the Sars scare settled.

He contacted about 15 Auckland travel agents yesterday to see how they were being affected by the Sars scare.

There were cases where overseas conferences had been postponed and there was a drop in new bookings.

"People are delaying their travel plans but there do not seem to be major, major cancellations."

Mr Langton said he would ask colleagues at the association's monthly meeting in Christchurch today to further gauge the impacts of Sars and the Gulf war.

"Travel has been through this sort of thing before ... Eventually it always picks up again."

But Mr Langton said he was disappointed airlines were offering customers only a three-month window in which to delay flights.

"That is not going to make a difference ... I will be asking the board to get them to change their minds and extend that period to six or 12 months."

The epidemic is continuing to undermine struggling Asian economies.

In Hong Kong, where tourism makes up about 6 per cent of the economy, 22 per cent of flights were cancelled on Sunday, similar to Saturday's level, as travellers cancelled their plans.

Hong Kong hospitals are now preparing for a worst-case scenario of up to 3000 cases of the deadly Sars virus by the end of April, as it claimed yet another victim in Canada.

Up to a quarter of those infected in Hong Kong are medical staff, and the Government is now trying to hire doctors and nurses from the private sector.

With 22 people dead and 842 infected, Hong Kong is the second worst-hit area after southern China's Guangdong province, where the disease originated.

China, which has been criticised for having been too slow to acknowledge the disease and warn its neighbours, said on Sunday that its toll from the virus had climbed to 51, with 1247 infections as of April 5.

A Finnish man died in Beijing from the virus on Sunday, taking the number of deaths in China's capital to four, a health official said.

Pekka Aro, 53, arrived in Beijing from Thailand on March 23 to attend an international labour conference.

A building in a diplomatic compound on Monday where he had visited had been sealed off and disinfected.

People stood outside wearing masks while the Tayuan office complex, which houses foreign embassies and organisations, was disinfected.

Aro, visiting from Geneva, was the first foreigner to succumb to the disease in mainland China.

Scientists are still trying to pin down the identity of the culprit virus, and some say more than one could be at work.

The biggest hospital in Singapore, which has 106 infections. started screening visitors after 20 of its nurses and a doctor were suspected of catching the virus.

A doctor at Singapore General Hospital was confirmed to be infected, raising fears of a crack in the city state's strategy of isolating infected people.

How Sars develops

* Incubation period typically two to seven days, although can be up to 10 days.

* Illness generally begins with a fever of over 38C.

* Fever associated with chills. May also be headaches, general unwellness, muscle pain and some mild respiratory symptoms.

* After three to seven days dry cough develops. In 10 per cent to 20 per cent of cases respiratory illness requires intubation and mechanical ventilation.

* Most patients 25-70 years who were previously healthy. Few among those under 15.

* A few close contacts have developed a similar illness but most remain well.

* Some close contacts have mild illness without respiratory symptoms, suggesting illness might not always progress to respiratory phase.

* Three per cent die.

Source: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention