Apartment block residents in quarantine as virus spreads

HEALTH officials in Hong Kong have ordered the residents of an apartment block to be quarantined for 10 days in an effort to control a deadly new virus.

With the number of cases in the territory reported to be at least 622 yesterday, 213 have been linked to the Amoy Gardens housing estate in urban Kowloon where the block is situated.

Policemen and dozens of health workers in surgical masks, caps and coats are in the estate where the current residents of Block E said to number 700 have been ordered to stay at home until midnight on April 9.