SARS Fears Soar
The worldwide death toll from the pneumonia-like illness known as SARS now tops 260, and about 4,400 other people have been infected – half of those have since recovered.
The worst outbreaks, by far, are in China, where 110 people have died from the disease, 39 of them in Beijing, the Health Ministry said.
CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen reports Beijing is a city in a kind of psychological lockdown, People are terrified of SARS, and at the same time told by their government not to leave the city. Authorities don't want people traveling and spreading SARS.
The city's confidence took a body blow Thursday when authorities closed off a major, 1,000-bed hospital, sending patients to other hospitals and putting some 2,000 employees under observation. There are 60 suspected cases among the hospital staff, a major outbreak that added to the rumors and fears in the city – fears that made millions hide behind masks and caused desperate runs on local food markets as people stocked up.
To enforce the travel ban, random roadblocks were set up stopping people coming in or out of Beijing. At one temporary roadblock, anyone without urgent business was turned back. People suspected of infection faced instant roadside medical checks.
But a foreign camera crew was quickly sent packing; officials apparently afraid more news from their beleaguered city would only be bad news.
The city also closed its schools, sending 1.7 million kids home for two weeks.
China's state-run media, which ignored SARS for months, is now full of reassuring stories about public places being disinfected.
And there's an extra dose of propaganda: Happy people shown exercising to maintain good health and fight off the virus. But the city is anything but happy, or confident, that the outbreak can be stopped anytime soon.
The toll of dead and infected continues its grim climb, both in Beijing and elsewhere in China. The World Health Organization is worried that China is still not coming clean on all the cases it has, worried that even now fresh outbreaks may be starting in rural and poor areas across this nation
of 1.2 billion people.
The effects of the disease were also being felt — though less profoundly — in Canada. Both Toronto and Beijing were added Wednesday to a list of other Chinese cities as places travelers should avoid.
Toronto has far fewer cases than China and only 16 deaths, but the World Health Organization said it had exported SARS cases to other countries. Canadian officials, fearing a continued decline in business, asked WHO to reconsider, but noted that was unlikely.
Health officials continue to wrestle with calculations for the death rate for SARS. Hong Kong health officials revised their rate Thursday to 7.2 percent of all reported cases, from about 5 percent earlier.
The World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the death rate remains below 6 percent, but there is disagreement among various governments about how to calculate it.
The South China Morning Post quoted two experts as saying the mortality rate in Hong Kong might end up around 10 percent.
In Singapore, which has reported 17 SARS deaths, Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang said Thursday that 8 to 9 percent of the island's SARS patients are dying. The city-state was refurbishing a drug rehabilitation camp to hold anyone who violates a harsh order to stay under home quarantine.
The climbing death rate has some experts worried – death rates generally decrease after the initial outbreak of disease, reports CBS News Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin.
But all agree it's simply too soon to tell where SARS is headed, what the numbers forecast and what the history books will say.
"We are in the evolution of an epidemic. When you're in the evolution of an epidemic things change and they unfold day to day," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
As SARS unfolds, the United States finds itself in a unique position: few cases and no deaths. But health officials warn this is no time to get complacent:
"There is nothing to suggest that an infected traveler couldn't come here and start a cascade of transmission," says Dr. Julie Gerberding of the Centers for Disease Control.
In this evolving epidemic, one of the biggest problems in dealing with SARS is still simply diagnosing it.
Experts say there is absolutely no distinction between SARS symptoms and symptoms of cold and flu: fever, headaches, achiness and cough, eventually exploding into respiratory distress.
The single most important factor to consider in diagnosing SARS remains travel history.