China still covering up Sars, doctors say

12.00pm

WASHINGTON - China's government, already under fire for having hidden an epidemic of deadly respiratory illness, is still under-reporting the number of cases, doctors said.

The United States said its measures, which include keeping a close eye on patients with relatively mild symptoms, seemed to be keeping the epidemic at bay there, but in Canada Chinese-Canadians reported they were being discriminated against by people terrified of the new disease.

Although Chinese officials said the epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) was under control, Chinese doctors contacted by Reuters and by other news organisations spoke of packed wards and many more deaths than reported by Beijing.

Several Chinese doctors said epidemic wards at their hospitals were full with suspected Sars patients and one hospital had shut its doors to outpatients for nearly a week.

"It's impossible there are only 19 Sars cases in Beijing," said a doctor at the Beijing University No. 1 Hospital. "There are no beds left in our epidemic ward."

Beijing has reported 19 cases and four deaths out of 1271 infections and 53 deaths nationwide, most of them in southern Guangdong province where the virus first appeared in November.

But the doctors said the official Beijing toll did not include the deaths of two health workers and an elderly man.

Peking Union Hospital had at least four confirmed cases, while the No. 306 military hospital had two. Staff who treated those patients had all been quarantined, doctors said.

Time magazine quoted Dr Jiang Yanyong, a physician at Beijing's Chinese People's Liberation army General Hospital (No. 301), as saying that 60 Sars patients have been admitted to one hospital and seven died.

Time quoted Jiang as saying "a failure to disclose accurate statistics about the illness will only lead to more deaths".

On Monday Dr David Heymann of the World Health Organisation told a US Senate committee that the epidemic could have been controlled if Chinese authorities had asked for help in November.

WHO is now praising China for its cooperation and has a team in Guangdong investigating the outbreak.

At least 103 people have died worldwide from Sars and 2750 have been infected in about 20 countries. Nearly half the cases are in China. Although the epidemic is small, it concerns doctors because the virus that causes Sars is new, infectious and has a death rate of nearly 4 per cent.

The chief suspect is a newly identified coronavirus, whose closest relative is a common cold virus.

The older the patient, the more likely he is to die of Sars, Dr Joseph Sung and colleagues in the medical team at Hong Kong's Prince of Wales Hospital reported in a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Those who died also had high levels of an enzyme suggesting lung damage called lactate dehydrogenase, the team reported. In addition, patients who died had high levels of immune cells called neutrophils, which the body releases to fight invading bacteria or viruses.

Although all five patients who died in Sung's study had some other illness, such as congestive heart failure, liver cirrhosis or hepatitis, being ill with something besides Sars did not put patients at special risk of dying, they reported.

Canada is one of the countries hardest hit by Sars, with some 226 people infected and 10 reported deaths. The virus was carried to Canada by people flying on airliners from Asia.

Thousands of Canadians, many of them health care workers, have been quarantined in their homes, while others are wearing masks to work for fear that they might have been exposed to the virus and might infect others.

Chinese-Canadians said they were being treated like monsters.

Ming Tat Cheung, president of Toronto's Chinese Cultural Centre, said shoppers were staying away from normally bustling Chinatown, and sales were down by up to 70 per cent.

"We have people calling here saying that Canadians are telling them 'You dirty Chinese, you eat everything, that's why you bring diseases'," Cheung told Reuters.

"Chinese Canadians are the victims, not the instigators."

US Centres for Disease Control Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said such reactions were illogical. "This is not an illness of Asians," Gerberding told a US Senate hearing. "This is an illness of people in a particular part of the world where the virus is spreading."

But one Toronto cab driver said he was not picking up passengers from hospitals or from the Chinatown area.

"It's not racism -- it's a precaution. I have to protect my family," said the cab driver, who refused to give his name.

- REUTERS