Asian countries try to stop spread of Sars

Malaysia stopped issuing entry visas to most Chinese travellers to curb severe acute respiratory syndrome while Hong Kong today cautiously prepared to let more than 200 people go home from quarantine camps after they showed no signs of the deadly infection.

Other countries in Asia laid on extra precautions. Indonesia urged its citizens to stop spitting in public places. Singapore’s Roman Catholic Church reportedly told its priests to stop hearing confessions.

Sars has infected more than 2,600 people worldwide and killed at least 104, most of them in mainland China and Hong Kong, with others deaths in Canada, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.

In the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, a Foreign Ministry official said its embassy in Beijing has been ordered to stop issuing visas for most of mainland Chinese until Sars is contained.

But it is not a complete ban. Members of government delegations and those on business trips can still apply if they are declared free of Sars symptoms such as fever, coughing and breathing difficulties, said a spokesman at the embassy in Beijing. Travellers from Hong Kong are not affected.

Malaysia’s decision spells more trouble for an Asian-Pacific travel industry that has been battered by Sars, which has spread through airliners to some countries after apparently originating in China’s Guangdong province.

Australian flag carrier Qantas today said it will lay off 1,000 staff before the end of June, blaming a drop in traffic brought about by Sars as well as the war in Iraq.

Hong Kong’s airport has seen hundreds of flights cancelled since the UN’s World Health Organisation warned people not to travel to the former British colony if they could avoid it.

The Thai Travel Agents Association estimated today that 10% of the travel agencies that comprise its 500 members will close shop in the coming weeks, and more could fail soon after that.

As fears of the illness spread globally, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said it was receiving a record number of phone calls from citizens. The volume has come to as many as 1,500 a day – more than the CDC got during a spate of anthrax attacks in 2001.

Hong Kong said a 10-day quarantine period was ending at midnight tonight for about 240 residents of an apartment building that was evacuated last week after suffering a major Sars outbreak.

About 220 could go home to the Block E building of the Amoy Gardens apartment complex, officials said, but 16 found to be carrying the disease, though with no symptoms, will stay in quarantine.

Amoy Gardens has suffered at least 283 Sars cases, about half of them from Block E.

Critics said the Hong Kong Health Department should provide an explanation for how Sars spread in Block E, and assurances it was safe, before the residents could go home.

“Officials haven’t told us what had really happened,” said Dr Lo Wing-lok, an infectious disease expert who also serves in the Legislative Council.

Experts have raised various theories, from a leaking drainpipe to cockroaches, about how Sars spread through the building, and Health Department spokeswoman Eva Wong said their findings will be released in a few days.