China dramatically raised the death toll from the new Asian virus yesterday, admitting that it had killed 34 people there so far, including three in Beijing.
Singapore, which has quarantined 861 people with the flu-like symptoms and reported its first two deaths from the condition, called severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), said that all its schools would be closed until April 6.
The symptoms of the disease, which is believed to be spread by droplets from sneezing and coughing, include high fever, chills, coughing, cold and breathing difficulty. Many victims quickly develop severe pneumonia.
Three to five of every 100 people infected die of the disease, experts say.
The health bureau of the Chinese province of Guangdong said 792 cases of ”atypical pneumonia” had been reported by late February, including 680 in the provincial capital Guangzhou, and a total of 24 deaths.
Last week China was still claiming that only five had died from not more than 300 cases in Guangdong, that the outbreak had been ”effectively controlled”, and that there were no deaths in Beijing.
Yesterday Beijing health officials said that three people had died of the disease in the capital and five more had been infected. Hospitals have been put on alert and plans laid out to prevent the disease spreading in the city.
Guangdong borders Hong Kong, where there have been 11 deaths from 319 cases, 316 of those infected suffering severe pneumonia. The infection is thought to have been transmitted by a Guangdong doctor who visited the territory.
World Health Organisation officials are urging China to issue regular updates and to allow its investigators access to the cases in Guangdong.
It was initially thought that the unknown virus could only be spread by close contact, but there are fears that it may be airborne.
A Hong Kong official issued a chilling warning to the city’s seven million people that the disease was spreading among the public.
”We can see the trend of the figure climbing. People from all walks of life have been infected,” Hong Kong’s deputy director of health, Leung Pak-yin, said.
”If you are on the plane and an infected person is sitting either behind or in front of you and he coughs, you can get infected.”
Hong Kong officials had said previously that the illness was mostly confined to hospital staff and relatives of infected patients.
The disease has spread to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada and Germany, infecting more than 500.
Suspected cases have been reported in the US, Japan, Britain and Australia. Four people have died in Vietnam, three in Canada and two in Singapore.
More than 70 people have been infected in Singapore.
Worried parents in Hong Kong and Singapore kept children home from school this week or sent them to their classes wearing surgical masks.
”Don’t worry about how you look. You should feel lucky you have this to protect you,” a Hong Kong mother told her son as he fidgeted under his mask.
The Singapore government went further yesterday and said it would halt classes for all the city state’s 500 000 children to try to alleviate parent concern.
Hong Kong has ruled out suspending classes, although nearly 100 schools have chosen to close.
Two more school children fell ill yesterday, bringing the total to nine.
Hong Kong is trying to track down 78 foreigners who stayed on the same hotel floor as the infected mainland Chinese doctor who is suspected of starting the Hong Kong outbreak in February.
The hotel guests, including Britons, stayed on the ninth floor of the Metropole hotel on February 21-22. – Guardian Unlimited Â