Woman traced to Sars outbreak

SINGAPORE - Nearly every infection of the deadly Sars respiratory illness in Singapore has been traced to one woman who caught the virus while staying at a Hong Kong hotel.

Esther Mok, a former air stewardess, is linked to 91 of 98 confirmed cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Singapore, a Ministry of Health official said yesterday.

The disease, which has a 3 to 5 per cent mortality rate, has killed nearly 80 people worldwide and infected more than 2300.

World Health Organisation scientists yesterday headed to China's Guangdong province, finally getting access to patients at the heart of an outbreak of the deadly virus that has sparked an international health crisis.

After being criticised for its silence on the disease, China finally allowed the WHO in, four months after the first Guangdong cases.

Mok is still being treated in Singapore where four people, including her father, have died from the virus since last week.

The city-state has the world's third-highest number of confirmed infections and nearly 1000 people are in quarantine.

Mok and two other Singapore women had stayed at the Metropole, a Kowloon hotel identified as the likely starting place for Hong Kong's outbreak after an infected doctor from Guangdong stayed there on February 21.

The three suffered from high fever after flying back to Singapore in February and were treated in hospital by doctors who were mystified by the virus and did not know of its risks. WHO defined it as Sars last month.

Singapore health officials say Mok's infection set off a chain reaction that left 45 family members, friends or close contacts of the woman, along with 46 hospital staff, with Sars.

"Ninety-one infections arose from that case," an official said. Singapore's other cases all consist of people who flew into the country from Hong Kong or southern China.

Singapore's Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang described Mok as one of several "super infectors" of the disease.

Yesterday Hong Kong extended the closure of most of its schools until April 21.

The Government had earlier ordered schools to be shut from March 29 to April 6.

Hong Kong authorities have also sent out a blanket text message to about six million mobile phone users to shoot down an internet story that the former British colony had been declared an "infected city".

"We wanted to get our message out as quickly as possible to allay fears," said Terence Yu, a spokesman for the Commerce, Information and Technology Bureau.

The Government used the text message this week after the "infected city" hoax report appeared online, prompting panic among some residents who thought the territory would be shut down and rushed out to stock up on food and supplies.

The Government's text response said: "Director of Health announced at 3pm today there is no plan to declare Hong Kong as an infected area."

Said Ada Ko, a 47-year-old office assistant: "At first I wondered why they sent me such a weird message. It's useful, but it came in a bit too late to calm the public."

"It's a bit odd," said 20-year-old student Forrest Kan, who had been unaware of the "infected city" rumour until he got the message.

The hoax story was allegedly posted by a 14-year-old boy who copied the website design of the popular Chinese-language Ming Pao newspaper.

He has been arrested and was quoted as saying he did it for fun, and didn't think anybody would believe the story.

The online rumour fuelled Hong Kong residents' fears of Sars, which already have hundreds of thousands of people wearing surgical masks. Some fear touching lift buttons.

A telecommunications professor said mass text messaging - or SMS messaging - was justified in emergencies, but could potentially be abused.

In Fiji a rugby player who had played in the weekend's rugby sevens competition has been sent to hospital amid fears he has Sars.

Fiji television named the player as Kiniviliame Salabogi who, it said, had developed flu-like symptoms after returning from the competition.

There was no confirmation of whether the footballer had the disease, but health authorities had prepared contingency measures for dealing with rugby players following the competition.

The measures included admission to a hospital and isolation in the event of the appearance of symptoms.

- REUTERS