Sars death toll hits new high in Hong Kong

12.00pm - By SEVERIN CARRELL

LONDON - The global crisis over the Sars virus has intensified with the death toll in Hong Kong reachingd record levels and Singapore imposing draconian measures to control the outbreak.

The authorities in Hong Kong said 12 people died yesterday from the flu-like Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome - the province's highest daily figure since the epidemic began last month, taking the total toll to 81.

Clearly unnerved by the fast spread of the disease, the authorities in Singapore announced that from tomorrow Sars victims who flouted quarantine regulations would face fines and prison terms without a court hearing.

Unless it was quickly controlled, the outbreak would become "the worst crisis" that Singapore had ever faced, warned the Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong.

So far, 16 Singaporeans have died from Sars and 172 people have been infected.

"We are fighting a common enemy in Sars and this common enemy is invisible, so it is a very tough fight," he said.

Alarm about the spread of the virus has been heightened by incidents in Canada as well as South-east Asia.

A new alert was issued by the Indonesian authorities after a British sufferer absconded from Jakarta, shortly after being released from hospital. The unnamed Briton, 47, thought to be Indonesia's only confirmed Sars case, ignored an instruction to return to his home in Jakarta and boarded a flight to Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, passengers on a Cathay Pacific flight from Singapore to Hong Kong on 15 April were urged to contact health authorities after a male flight attendant was hospitalised with the disease.

Those alerts and yesterday's death toll, which has taken the worldwide figure to at least 185, marred attempts by Hong Kong's authorities to calm public nerves by co-ordinating a largely symbolic "public clean-up" yesterday.

The Health Minister led thousands of volunteers who bleached restaurants, shopping centres and housing complexes.

Meanwhile, the Vietnamese government warned it could close its entire border with China, the source of the virus, to prevent it spreading further. In Toronto, health officials sought to calm fears about a fresh outbreak after disclosing that one new case could not be linked to known infections.

Four people living in the same building were probable Sars victims, they said, but one patient had no known link to other victims.

Until now, all Canada's 250 suspected or proven cases were traceable to the country's first Sars case who brought the disease from Hong Kong's Metropole Hotel - an epicentre of the outbreak.

Nearly 7,000 Canadians have now gone into voluntary quarantine, including two people forced into hospital under police guard after ignoring court orders to do so.

Meanwhile, 155 British public school pupils began a 10-day quarantine yesterday at summer camps on the Isle of Wight and in Dorset after returning from Hong Kong to begin the summer term at 32 boarding schools around the country, including Eton.

A Dutch vet became the first human victim linked to the "bird flu" epidemic sweeping through Holland's poultry industry. The vet died of pneumonia after being infected by the virus which, although rarely transmitted to humans, killed six people in Hong Kong after emerging in 1997.

Meanwhile A man suspected of having the first case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in New Zealand was in a stable condition in Dunedin Hospital tonight, staff said.

Geoffrey Vine, 63, of Dunedin, was admitted to an isolation ward yesterday with most of the symptoms of the potentially fatal severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Staff expected the results of tests would be returned tomorrow, duty co-ordinator Peter Munro said yesterday.



- INDEPENDENT, NZPA