SINGAPORE - Singapore, hit by the world's third-highest number of Sars deaths, showed signs of containing the virus yesterday - going 48 hours without a new case and reopening a food market at the heart of an outbreak.
The Government said the battle was far from over in the tiny city state, where Sars has killed 26 of the 203 people infected, a fatality rate of 12.8 per cent, more than double the global average. But after quarantining thousands of seemingly healthy people in their homes, Singapore reported only four new cases last week - the smallest number since the epidemic began in March.
Yesterday it reopened the sprawling Pasir Panjang wholesale market, which was shut on April 19 when all its 2400 workers and their families were quarantined after several people contracted the virus there.
But the once-bustling, 24-hour warehouse-style market, which supplied 70 per cent of Singapore's vegetables before the closure, has been transformed by its brush with Sars.
Nurses, wearing protective face masks, take the temperature of customers and workers entering the building, which is ringed by a new metal fence.
Health declaration forms must be filled out at screening stations and the flow of business has been slowed.
"Our biggest danger now is ... to relax the efforts which we have put in," said Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan.
Hospitals, the scene of most Sars infections in Singapore, also appear to have brought the virus under control with no infections occurring in any hospital in 16 days.
A minister of state, Dr Balaji Sadasivan, said a no-visitor rule at six state-run hospitals might be relaxed by the end of the month.
Nearly 90 per cent of Singapore's victims have caught the illness while visiting or working at hospitals.
Singapore General Hospital, the nation's largest and scene of 47 confirmed infections, has gone 19 days without any patients, visitors or staff contracting the virus.
Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang said last week that a further 14 to 21 days were needed before knowing for sure if Sars had peaked, but the World Health Organisation says Singapore appears to be over the worst of the crisis.
- REUTERS
Herald Feature: SARS
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Food market reopens as Sars infections tail off
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