Top Experts Deny Under-reporting SARS Cases in China

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Top Experts Deny Under-reporting SARS Cases in China

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Top experts from the National Task Force for SARS Prevention and Control Tuesday denied that the decline in the number of new SARS cases being reported meant China was failing to include a lot of suspected SARS sufferers with milder symptoms in its figures.

Xu Dezhong - an expert from the task force - said in an interview: "China's present diagnostic standards for determining suspected SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cases are much stricter than those used by the World Health Organization."

This means that suspected SARS sufferers who have even milder symptoms will still not be discharged from hospital, Xu noted.

Under WHO guidelines, a patient is not diagnosed as having SARS without a history of contact with suspected or confirmed SARS patients.

However, China's guidelines say that people who have no history of contact but who do display other SARS symptoms should also be regarded as suspect cases, Weng Xinzhi of the Chinese Academy of Engineering said Tuesday.

Xu said: "I think no doctors would now dare to curtly ignore patients who have even mild symptoms of SARS. Otherwise, they will be punished by the Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases."

The Chinese mainland yesterday reported 17 new SARS cases and five deaths, bringing the cumulative total to 5,248 confirmed cases and 294 deaths as of 10 am yesterday.

Rao Keqin - another member of the SARS task force - told China Daily that the decline of the epidemic is a result of strenuous efforts made by the central and local governments and all Chinese people rather than the under-reporting of suspected sufferers.

"The epidemic peak on the Chinese mainland has passed. But it is too early to say the epidemic has been contained and many of the measures now in place should be continued for quite a long time," Rao said.

Liang Wannian, deputy director of the municipal government's Beijing Health Bureau, said that the capital's medical-care sector has strictly followed the National Clinical Diagnostic Standard for SARS, which was revised by the Ministry of Health on May 3.

"But there might be a few patients with false negative or positive SARS symptoms as no disease-hit area in the world can be 100 per cent sure that the diagnoses are all correct," Liang told a regular press conference Tuesday.

"There is no need for us to underreport the number of SARS cases," said Liang. "The primary task of the fight against SARS in China is to contain and eradicate the epidemic at an early date, which requires the municipality to continue the strategy of 'leaving out no suspected patients'."

Liang called on the public not to lower their guard and to continue their previous efforts against SARS in case there is a rebound of the epidemic.

In another development, Taiwan reported a cumulative total of 344 confirmed SARS cases and 40 deaths as of Monday and has now become the region where the outbreak is growing the most rapidly at present, the WHO said.

In Hong Kong, four new confirmed cases of SARS and two deaths were reported yesterday, while 178 confirmed cases were being treated in hospital.

As of Monday, a cumulative total of 7,864 confirmed SARS cases, including 643 deaths, had been reported in 31 countries and regions, according to the WHO.

China's Ministry of Health and a WHO task force ended a six-day inspection tour in Central China's Henan Province yesterday. The province has been doing an impressive job fighting SARS, WHO expert James Maguire said.

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