New travel alerts as SARS world death toll passes 500

THE global death toll from SARS passed 500 yesterday after China reported five more deaths from an illness the government is trying desperately to stop spreading out of control in the countryside.

The Health Ministry said 146 more people had been infected, taking the number of cases to 4,698, the bulk of the world's total, while deaths totalled 224.

Shanghai, China's commercial capital, reported its first death due to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome yesterday.

With no sign SARS is being controlled in the world's most populous nation, the government and the World Health Organisation fear the epidemic could spread rapidly through the vast hinterland, where health services are often poor.

The WHO extended its SARS-related travel warning yesterday to Tianjin and the province of Inner Mongolia as well as Taipei, capital of Taiwan. Taipei officials said SARS had probably spread into the community and the next five days would be crucial.

The UN health agency had already advised against travel to Beijing, the provinces of Guangdong and Shanxi, and Hong Kong.

In Russia, the Interfax news agency issued and then withdrew a report saying that a man living on the border with China had become Russia's first SARS case. A Health Ministry spokesman said the man had all the symptoms of the infection but the virus had not been isolated.

Russia, with a 2,250-mile frontier with China, has closed Far East border crossings to try to prevent the epidemic's spread and has said it might order a halt to "all air travel to airports in China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan".

Highlighting fears that SARS could run rampant in the Chinese countryside, Premier Wen Jiabao has urged preventative measures be taken in areas where "basic rural medical facilities are weak".

Reflecting those concerns, four WHO health experts headed to Hebei province yesterday to assess whether healthcare systems there could cope with a SARS outbreak.

The province almost surrounds Beijing, which has the world's highest number of SARS cases and is home to a floating population of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, many from Hebei.

The SARS virus surfaced in southern China late last year and has been spread around the world by air travellers. The global death toll topped 500 yesterday, with more than 7,400 infected.

Reinforcing global concern, an international team of scientists said the SARS death rate was higher than previously thought and could be as high as 55% for people over 60. They said the rate was about 13% in those under that age. There was no evidence the virus had mutated into a deadlier form.

Researchers and health officials in Hong Kong and Britain, who examined data from the first nine weeks of the outbreak of the virus in Hong Kong, found the incubation period the time from infection to displaying symptoms averaged six days.

China said yesterday it has punished more than 120 officials in the past month for covering up the extent of the SARS outbreak or failing to prevent the spread of the flu-like virus, the website of Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

Officials in 15 provinces and major cities were sacked, suspended, warned or demoted for deserting their work, delaying reporting or covering up the number of infections and deaths.

In China's countryside, fear of SARS has led to some villages setting up roadblocks to keep away people from Beijing and at least four riots against quarantine centres have been reported in recent days. Thousands have been quarantined in China.