No New SARS Case among Chinese Students for Seven Days Running: Expert

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, May 23, 2003

No New SARS Case among Chinese Students for Seven Days Running: Expert

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China has essentially curbed the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in schools after recording no new infections among students for seven consecutive days, said a Chinese medical expert Thursday.

However, as students would soon return to school after weeks at home, special priority must be paid to prevent a resurgence of the contagious disease, said Nie Jun, an expert from the national anti-SARS team under the Ministry of Health (MOH).

Students were one of the groups most severely hit by the virus, Nie said.

MOH statistics show that from March 31 to May 21, China reported 276 cases of students contracting the flu-like virus, including graduate students, college students, and high school and primary school students.

This accounted for 10.2 percent of the national total of clinically confirmed cases during this period.

Nie said the outbreak of the disease among students coincided with the overall national situation in the fight against the virus.

Student SARS patients rose rapidly in mid April and reached a peak on April 25. After that, the number of cases started to fall gradually.

By the end of April, students amounted to 11.2 percent of the national total of SARS patients.

The proportion had since dropped to 5.9 percent.

In terms of regions, north China's Hebei and Shanxi Provinces had relatively large numbers of student victims, totaling 22.2 percent and 19.5 percent respectively of the reported clinically confirmed cases in the two provinces.

Most of the student patients -- who were sparsely distributed --contracted the virus outside their campuses, and only a few schools had local transmission cases, Nie said.

Nie said that 148 cases were found among graduate students and college students, accounting for 53.6 percent of the national student total.

Meanwhile, primary pupils had only 40 cases, totaling 14.5 percent.

Nie attributed the higher proportion of graduate and college student patients to wider scopes of social activities and dormitory life.

Nie said the statistics for male and female college students were basically the same, while boys were noticeably more than girls in primary and high schools in cases of the disease.

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