Beijing Offers Expatriates Special Medical Help for Preventing SARS

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, April 11, 2003

Beijing Offers Expatriates Special Medical Help for Preventing SARS

Beijing will provide free treatment for SARS patients who can't afford the treatment. The city has reinforced sterilization and disinfection in public places including airports, bus stations and taxies.

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The Beijing municipal government will offer special medical help for expatriates in the city for the prevention of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Guo Jiyong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau, announced the plans Thursday at a briefing on SARS prevention and treatment which was specially held here for expatriates and compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

According to Guo, an around-the-clock English hotline dealing with queries from expatriates has been set up in the city, and another such hotline will be opened in the very near future.

Two hospitals have been designated to provide special medical service for expatriates, said Guo.

If any foreign patient refuses to receive treatment in Beijing to keep the infectious disease from spreading to others, he or she can contact Beijing International SOS and a special plane will be arranged for a transfer.

Guo said Beijing has also begun to hand out some English materials and a tourist card on SARS to foreign visitors and long-term residents in Beijing, notifying them where they can find relevant prevention knowledge and providing hospital phone numbers.

The sanitation work at public places such as airports and railway stations will be strengthened and taxis and subways in Beijing are required to undergo daily disinfection, Guo stressed.

The epidemic prevention and supervision work will also be strengthened in areas heavily inhabited by foreign agencies, schools and families.

Guo said that so far only four cases of SARS were found among overseas people in Beijing, and except for one death, the other three are in stable conditions and still receiving treatment in hospitals.

Some 300 overseas people, mainly from foreign embassies, consulates, major corporations and media, were invited to the briefing. The Beijing government will also brief overseas students in the city on SARS prevention and treatment.

Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong said that the SARS outbreak is already under effective control in the city, and foreign business groups and people travelling here do not have to worry about the disease.

He said that since March 1st, Beijing has found 22 cases of SARS. Four of them come from Hong Kong and Taiwan, while two are foreign visitors.

Official statistics show that China has reported 1,290 SARS cases, most of which were detected Guangdong Province. Since the beginning of this month until Thursday, 86 new cases of SARS were found in Guangdong, a decrease of 40 percent from the same period of last year.

At the same time, China has begun animal experiments in an effort to determine the source of SARS.

After conducting case studies, Chinese scientists strongly believe that SARS patients are very likely attacked by a chlamydia agent or a corolla-virus- like agent, or even infected by the two together. Experts are now carrying out experiments on animals to verify the conclusion. They say this will take some time.

Hong Kong scientists have come to a similar conclusion after studying 50 patients with the disease and finding evidence of the viral activity in 90 percent of them. But U.S. health officials caution that confirmation of the finding is still needed. Guidelines were published on managing the disease, which begins with a fever and can progress quickly to breathing difficulties so severe that mechanical ventilation is required.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services says the recent outbreak of atypical pneumonia, or SARS, in China and southeast Asia is unlikely to have any immediate impact on its ratings of banks and insurance companies in the region.

Standard & Poor's says in a press release that the disease is likely to pressure the immediate financial performance of banks in the region's worst-affected economies, particularly Hong Kong. However, it is unlikely to seriously affect their medium term financial profiles, assuming that the SARS outbreak does not escalate into a pandemic.

Despite the fear of SARS in southern China, since the beginning of March, 12 international exhibitions have been held in the city of Shenzhen as planned.

An international health and beauty product technology expo opened in Shenzhen Thursday, attracting over 100 companies from Japan, the United States, Canada and other parts of China.

The Shenzhen exhibition centre has beefed up ventilation and disinfecting work to ensure the safety of visitors. Few people are wearing gauze masks during the exhibition. More will be held in the next two months.

Unfortunately Chinese runners Sun Ying-jie and Jin Li have been barred from Sunday's Rotterdam marathon. Organisers say it's unlikely the Chinese runners are carriers of SARS but precautions should be taken as their presence could have worried other runners. The two Chinese athletes Sun and Jin had been expected to be among the favourites for Sunday's race.

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