SARS Death Toll Nears 100

A Finnish man died of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Beijing on Sunday, becoming China's first foreign fatality from the disease, the Health Ministry said. He was among six new deaths reported in China, raising the country's death toll from the illness to 52.

Worldwide, the toll from the fast-spreading flu-like illness rose to 98 deaths as two more people died in Hong Kong.

Pekka Aro, 53, died at a Beijing hospital, but appeared to have SARS before he arrived in the Chinese capital on March 23 from Thailand, a Chinese official said, highlighting how the malady has spread through air travel.

Aro was sent to Beijing's Ditan Hospital on April 2, where he died early Sunday, said Liu Peilong, head of the Health Ministry's Department for International Cooperation. Aro was an official of the International Labor Organization at the agency's headquarters in Geneva, according to its Web site.

Aro told doctors he believed he caught the disease on the flight from Bangkok, said Guo Jiyong, deputy director general of the Beijing Health Bureau. He said no one who had contact with Aro in Beijing has shown symptoms.

A second foreigner — a Canadian — is hospitalized in Beijing with SARS, Liu said. He didn't give any details about the patient's identity or condition, or say whether the person was a resident of Beijing.

Five Chinese patients have died of SARS since Wednesday, Liu said. He didn't say where they died, but noted that most of China's more than 1,200 people sickened are in the southern province of Guangdong, where officials say the world's first known case of SARS occurred.

Guangdong accounts for at least 40 of China's reported deaths, with at least five in Beijing and three in Guangxi, a region to Guangdong's west.

Four members of a World Health Organization team met Sunday with officials of the Guangdong provincial Center for Disease Control, said team spokesman Chris Powell. They're trying to figure out how SARS spreads and why it kills.

The WHO team, which includes specialists who work in the United States, Germany, Wales and Bangladesh, planned to stay in Guangdong through Tuesday.

In Hong Kong, where two more deaths were reported, residents don't touch subway railings, or escalator handrails, or even elevator buttons, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen. Schools are closed and restaurants are empty.

"When you meet people you don't shake their hand any more," said public relations executive Wendy Kwok. "You just kind of give them a wave, and everyone understands why you don't."

The Chinese knew about the outbreak, but ordered silence from their state-run media, reports Petersen, especially during the ceremonial National People's Congress when bad news is banned. China, say its critics, chose to save face, rather than save lives.

Most of China's deaths and cases have occurred in Guangdong, next to Hong Kong, where experts suspect the disease began.

It appears a Chinese doctor from Guangdong, unaware he was infected, traveled to Hong Kong, staying at the Metropole Hotel, reports Petersen.

Somehow, maybe by doing something as ordinary as coughing in a crowded elevator, he passed the infection on to a half-dozen people from various countries. Among them was a couple visiting from Toronto. They boarded a flight home, and the SARS epidemic was on its way.

"There has not been an organism that has spread like this in North America in recent memory," said Dr. Andrew Simor, an infectious disease expert in Toronto.

Toronto practically shut down as a result: Two major hospitals were quarantined and visitors were restricted for the first time in decades.

"I think people, wherever they come from, are at risk," said James Maguire, an epidemiologist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is a member of the WHO team in Guangdong.

Maguire also praised the response of staff at the No. 8 People's Hospital in Guangdong's capital Guangzhou, which was believed to have seen the largest number of SARS cases in the province.

"It takes a tremendous amount of adaptation and flexibility and most importantly dedication. The staff is still working incredibly hard," Maguire said after visiting the facility.

The hospital still hosts 32 people sick with SARS, down from 150 at the height of the outbreak in mid-February, said hospital deputy director Ying Chibiao. He said the hospital suffered 11 deaths — mostly patients in their 60s.

The biggest problem facing scientists is they still don't know what causes SARS, reports CBS News Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin. At first they thought it was a virus in the measles family; now they say they are almost certain the culprit is a variation of the Corona virus, the same virus behind the common cold.

Either way, without an exact cause, diagnosing SARS is a murky proposition, and that makes treating it even harder.

Symptoms include high fever, aches, dry cough and shortness of breath. No cure has been found, although Chinese doctors said they have successfully treated cases with a mixture of Western and traditional Chinese medicines.

So far, the SARS outbreak is more frightening than deadly: Compared to other viruses, the death rate is relatively low, about 3.5 percent

"That is far less than the death rate we would normally see with other causes of community-acquired pneumonia coming to the hospital," said Simor. "And it's also less than death rates associated with influenza in patients who are coming to hospital."

So far, no deaths have been reported in the United States.