Military

DATE=4/22/2003

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ASIA SARS

NUMBER=2-302436

BYLINE=KATHERINE MARIA

DATELINE=HONG KONG

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The number of SARS cases in Asia continues to climb as new cases arise in both China and Hong Kong. V-O-A's Katherine Maria reports from Hong Kong, where officials say that measures to protect healthcare workers have not been adequate.

TEXT: Under the new spirit of openness, China reported more than 150 new cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. The death toll also rose by at least five, to 97.

China reports more than 21-hundred SARS cases, about half the global total, of least four-thousand patients. There have been at least 230 SARS deaths worldwide.

/// LIU ACT IN MANDARIN ///

Liu Jianchao, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman calls Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome "a catastrophe new to mankind."

Despite the rise in cases, Chinese authorities have backed away from an earlier decision to cancel most of the seven-day holiday to mark Labor Day on May First. Workers will have five-days off.

But the government is discouraging people from traveling during the holiday, to avoid spreading the disease to impoverished rural areas, where health care facilities are limited.

A team of experts with the World Health Organization is visiting hospitals in Shanghai. The city has reported few SARS cases, raising suspicions that officials there are covering-up patient numbers, as was the case in Beijing. On Sunday, the national government fired China's health minister and the Beijing mayor for mishandling the SARS outbreak.

In Hong Kong, the city's leader, Tung Chee-hwa, thanked health care workers for their dedication in fighting SARS.

/// TUNG ACT IN CANTONESE ACT EST & FADE ///

Mr. Tung says he will ask a government body to earmark an estimated 25-million dollars for nurses and doctors who wish to seek extra training.

Hong Kong has seen the highest number of fatalities, and its death toll rose by five, to 99.

There were also 32 new cases, 10 of them health care workers. More than 20-percent of Hong Kong's 14-hundred-34 SARS patients are health workers.

Dr. Yeoh Eng-Kiong, Hong Kong's health secretary, says efforts to protect health care workers have been inadequate. He says some health workers caught the virus while using machinery to help SARS patients breathe.

Dr. Yeoh also says that in some cases health workers failed to recognize that patients hospitalized for other ailments were also infected with SARS.

/// OPT ///

Elsewhere in Asia, Malaysia reported its second probable SARS death - the country has seen only six possible cases so far.

/// OPT ///

In Singapore, the supply of fresh vegetables has been disrupted as 24-hundred workers at a vegetable market were quarantined after one worker came down with SARS. (SIGNED)

NEB/HK/KM/KPD/RAE