Scary... New SARS cases.... [Archive]

tommy

05-28-2003, 09:04 AM

... in Russia.

Russia confirms first SARS case
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 Posted: 9:38 AM EDT (1338 GMT)

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russia has confirmed its first case of severe acute respiratory syndrome -- a 25-year-old man who lives in a town bordering China.

The ministry of health definitively diagnosed the patient from Blagoveschensk, a town of 170,000 and the capital of Russia's Amur region, on Wednesday. Further testing is planned.

The victim, identified as Denis Soinikov, is a municipal worker who lived in a riverfront hotel frequented by many Chinese nationals.

The river serves as the border between Russian and China, where the largest number of SARS cases have been reported.

Now Russia is to close several crossings along its 2,500 mile (4,000km) border with China, effective June 4.

Previously, authorities had closed 31 out of Russia's 51 border crossings with China and Mongolia and suspended most flights to and from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Those that do travel from the worst-affected SARS areas are screened for signs of the disease on arrival by doctors.

Gennady Onishchenko, Russia's chief public health physician, said the victim was the same person he told the Russian parliament about earlier this month.

"The diagnosis is unquestionably atypical pneumonia," he said, using the Russian term for SARS, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

Onishchenko cited a blood test for the diagnosis, Interfax reported.

Last week, a doctor expressed concerns about Russia's ability to cope with a possible SARS epidemic.

"The urgent task is to stock up medicine needed for this illness at places in Russia where it is most likely to break out," said Dr.Sergei Kolesnikov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Shell

05-28-2003, 12:39 PM

Toronto thought they were done with it but they confirmed three new deaths and eight new cases on Monday. :sad:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40622-2003May26.html

Here's a gross article for ya.. spit as a national pastime :crazy:

Why a Sars spitting ban is catching in throats of Chinese
http://www.sundayherald.com/34076

Hawking up, anywhere, anytime, was a national pastime in China ... until Sars struck. Now the country is struggling to keep it all in, as Hector Mackenzie in Beijing uncovers

Wang Linqiu heard the unmistakable deep-throat hack as he cycled home from work alongside a public bus in Beijing.
At first, he thought nothing of it. The sound, after all, is part and parcel of the city, as common as screeching bus brakes, blaring taxi horns and the hypnotic 'Wan Bao!' cry of street-side newspaper sellers.

It was only when the 32-year-old Air China employee felt the telltale spray of spittle on his face that he sprang into action.

Head down, he sprinted after the bus, giving chase for a full half-hour. He finally caught up with and boarded it, all set to confront one very surprised man, who was quickly fingered by fellow passengers.

One phone call later, passengers -- now relishing the free show -- egged on a member of the city's 2000-strong sanitation workforce as he dished out a 200 yuan (£16) fine to the stunned spitter.

Spitting in public, which until a month ago was about as common as breathing, now carries a fine of between 50 and 200 yuan, a hefty sum for the average Chinese.

Previous attempts to clamp down on what one China veteran has dubbed 'the national pastime', have proved about as successful as Scottish assaults on the World Cup.

Even the most genteel expatriate quickly grows accustomed to the operatic hack that typically precedes a full-blown ablution. Waiters generally don't bat an eyelid if a customer hawks up on the floor of a restaurant and many old timers have honed the tricky one-handed nose flick so beloved of our top footballers into something of an art form.

Spurred by the battle against Sars in the world's worst-affected city, government officials have picked a fight with an opponent every bit as formidable as the killer virus.

Scientists, using somewhat more scientific language, suggest that the virus is nourished in a gob of spit, and in this form poses an even greater health risk than sneezing and coughing. In a city petrified by the spectre of Sars, that is now officially 'a bad thing'.

Anyone found guilty of intentionally spreading Sars, for example, potentially faces the death penalty.

Wang himself later admitted that had the bus incident happened a couple of months ago, he would have probably shrugged it off. With the Sars scare at fever pitch, his anger was unrestrained.

Perhaps sensing a golden opportunity, the government -- already frantically image-building ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games which will be hosted in Beijing -- has mobilised sanitary workers (the 'secrete police', as one wag has dubbed them) to patrol the streets and root out offenders.

Armed with camcorders to record the evidence and backed by the turning tide of public opinion, they can be spotted in major gathering places such as Tiananmen Square, ready to pounce.

One of them is Xiao Yuehong, a 40-year-old whose unenviable patch includes Tiananmen, a tourist-magnet expanse capable of holding public gatherings of up to a million people.

Perhaps hardened by years of handling hawking hicks from the sticks, he reveals a certain sadistic streak when asked about what he regards as the most appropriate punishment for gobby visitors to the square.

With a glint in his eye, he said: 'I don't think the fine really produces a feeling of distress. I think (offenders) should be made to wear an eye-catching waistcoat and clean the square for at least three hours. That would let visitors know that the person is being punished for spitting. The pressure from the eyes of the people will make him remember it for the rest of his life.'

Bus driver Huang Lutian, 36, claims that if someone spits on his bus, he makes them clean it up on the spot. He recognises that while he is relatively powerless, the peer pressure of passengers generally does the trick. He also believes in social pressure, suggesting phlegm merchants should be 'laid-bare in the media'.

The hardline attitude certainly finds support amongst the city's massive foreign population. A convergence of sorts can be witnessed in a fast-developing capital in which Western influences are often absorbed and adapted by China's own rich heritage.

Sure, people are shocked by the intrusion of Starbucks into the Forbidden City. But the Seattle-based chain wasn't able to do so without major concessions, including a sympathetically styled building complete with classic Chinese flourishes.

Yet nowhere does culture clash quite so spectacularly as over the spitting issue -- a fact not lost on Olympic planners eager to make a good impression on those hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors expected to get their first impressions of China come 2008.

It's a tough task but there are encouraging signs. This week I overheard a woman severely chastising her husband who had just left a deposit on the street: 'Don't dare do that again!' she hissed, as disapproving eyes turned to glare at them.

Elsewhere I saw the throat-rasping hacking of one elderly man followed by a polite discharge into a paper napkin -- an officially approved practice.

It's all grist to the mill of an American writer friend who has spent the past 10 years of his life observing social trends in this fast-changing country. The working title of his latest work in progress is Spit Happens.

If the government gets its way, he may just have to rethink that one.

25 May 2003