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China scrambles to stem
SARS tide as death toll nears 100
BEIJING (AFP) China is
sending more SARS prevention teams into the provinces
and fasttracking the mass production of a kit to
detect the disease as fears grew that the virus could
sweep the country.
The new measures came as the official death toll was
raised to 94 and the number infected to more than
2,000.
While the number of cases in Beijing has jumped to 482
with another 602 suspected of having SARS, more
worrying for the government was the number of new
provinces reporting Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
Since President Hu Jintao stepped into the crisis last
week and ordered an end to the cover-up, 19 of China's
31 provinces and municipalities have acknowledged
incidence of the disease.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has voiced fears
that China's poor, rural areas lack the facilities and
reporting systems to deal with the issue and has
warned many more cases could be expected.
In an effort to stem the tide, China's cabinet, the
State Council, announced it will dispatch more SARS
prevention and treatment monitoring teams throughout
the continent-sized country.
State press Tuesday reported that teams had ordered to
Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Henan, Guangdong and Ningxia.
A team will also get to work in Beijing, the China
Daily said.
Premier Wen Jiabao told them to pay special attention
to rural areas, schools, government bodies and
enterprises and to publicise the importance of
prevention and treatment of SARS.
He demanded local governments work with the teams and
accurately report on the situation in their areas.
Vice Premier Wu Yi, who presided over the State
Council meeting, acknowledged the situation "remained
grave" but said "marked progress" had been made to
combat the killer disease, the paper said.
So far, the WHO has only investigated the situation in
the southern province of Guangdong, where atypical
pneumonia was thought to have originated in November,
and Beijing, where it blew the lid on China's
underreporting of SARS.
A team of experts Tuesday spent their second day in
Shanghai, investigating the extent of the outbreak in
China's largest city where just two cases have been
officially confirmed.
A Shanghai government official told AFP the six-man
team would be allowed to visit any hospital it wanted
to, although it was not clear if this included
military facilities.
"They will be allowed to enter any hospital in
Shanghai and any hospital that has SARS cases or
suspected SARS cases," he said, but could not confirm
that this included military hospitals.
Medical authorities meanwhile are set to mass produce
a fast SARS test kit.
The method, called the Enzyme Link Immuno Adsorbent
Assay, could detect the SARS virus within an hour,
Yang Huanming, director of the Beijing Genomics
Institute was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news
agency.
Yang said the current estimated daily production of
the test kit could meet the demands of 10,000 people,
and the output is expected to grow to 100,000 a day
soon. The report on the kit is with China's medical
authority awaiting approval.
SARS is caused by the coronavirus, a virus family
which causes the common cold, WHO experts have said.
But a cure is yet to be found.
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