Military

DATE=5/9/2003

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ASIA SARS (L)

NUMBER=2-303027

BYLINE=KATHERINE MARIA

DATELINE=HONG KONG

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Chinese health officials say at least 60 percent of SARS cases in Beijing cannot be traced to the source of infection - raising new concerns on how to contain the outbreak. While Taiwan Friday reported its single highest increase in patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. V-O-A's Katherine Maria has the latest on the virus from our Asia News Center.

TEXT: Liang Wannian, deputy chief of Beijing's Health Administration, said Friday his agency does not know how the majority of new Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome infections in China's capital, Beijing, were contracted.

/// LIANG ACT IN MADARIN WITH VOICE OVER ///

According to our statistics 40 percent of the newly received SARS patients have been in quarantine or under medical observation. But for the rest of the patients we do not know how they got infected. We do not know where they got infected - they just popped-up in the hospital as confirmed SARS patients.

///END ACT ///

International experts say "contact tracing" of SARS patients, which determines exactly whom infected people have had contact with, is key to stemming the outbreak.

But Beijing officials say they are still optimistic new infections in the city will continue to decline. Beijing recorded 48 new cases Friday. In April the daily number of new infections ranged between 60 and 80.

China's capital has the world's largest outbreak of SARS. Nationwide China now has more than 48-hundred infections and 230 people have died.

In Taiwan Friday - a day after the World Health Organization extended a travel advisory to Taiwan's capital - health authorities in Taipei reported 18 new cases for a total of 149. That is the city's biggest single day rise in SARS infections.

Hong Kong, which has more than 16-hundred cases, on Friday reported just six new cases - its lowest number of new infections since the disease started spreading rapidly in mid-March.

Hong Kong's leader Tung Chee-hwa announced the news to reporters.

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

He says the downward trend in SARS cases was encouraging and that while 210 have died, more than a thousand have recovered.

Worldwide the disease, which causes a serious pneumonia, has hit more than 71-hundred people.

The W-H-O Thursday doubled its estimate of the global death rate from SARS to between 14 and 15 percent.

W-H-O said it made the revisions based on the latest data from Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam. This comes after an international group of scientists published a study showing the disease is killing 20 percent of all patients in Hong Kong. (signed)

NEB/HK/KM/JO