Military

DATE=4/23/2003

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ASIA SARS (L)

NUMBER=2-302480

BYLINE=KATHERINE MARIA

DATELINE=HONG KONG

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: In Beijing, schools and universities are shutting down in an effort to curtail the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. V-O-A's Katherine Maria reports Hong Kong is welcoming international experts to check government reports that some residents were infected by sewage tainted with the SARS virus.

TEXT: Beijing's schools were ordered to close as new figures reveal that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has spread further in the city than previously thought.

/// FATHER ACT EST & FADE ///

This man complains that closing the schools will harm his son's education.

China now reports more than 23-hundred SARS cases and at least 106 deaths. But the Ministry of Health warned there are 11-hundred suspected cases scattered across the country.

Not only has the number of SARS victims increased, but more provinces reported SARS outbreaks, confirming that the disease has spread to China's poorer areas. At least 22 of China's 30 provinces and municipal districts have SARS cases.

The World Health Organization had voiced concern in the past that the death rate could rise if the disease hits areas ill-equipped to treat SARS.

Hong Kong officials say a team of environmental experts from W-H-O will examine tests indicating that SARS spread through a faulty sewage system to infect hundreds of people in one apartment building.

Tracy Treadwell, a W-H-O epidemiologist based in Hong Kong, explains the difficulty in determining the main cause for the massive outbreak in the Amoy Gardens high-rise.

/// TREADWELL ACT ///

I do not know that leaking sewage pipes, they are not placing a huge percentage of the cause on that, I think it is one of the additional causes. I do not think you can really say it is 50-percent this, 20-percent that, 10-percent that. We have no way of being able to break it out that way.

/// END ACT ///

Hong Kong has seen more than 14-hundred SARS cases and 105 deaths.

/// OPT ///

The city's lawmakers are considering a government relief package that grants tax rebates and loans for businesses hurt by the SARS outbreak, which has cut tourism and retailing.

Officials in Taiwan's capital, Taipei, said seven hospital workers have displayed SARS symptoms, such as high fever and atypical pneumonia, and are being isolated.

In Singapore, 24-hundred people under quarantine after possibly coming in contact with a SARS patient were told they could face jail if they do not remain isolated. The quarantine covers vendors in a vegetable market where one man became sick and died from the disease.

/// END OPT ///

Worldwide, more than four-thousand people have been infected with SARS and about 240 have died. (SIGNED)

NEB/HK/KM/KPD/RAE