Sars claims another life in China

China today reported a new Sars death and warned officials not to hide cases of the disease, while leaders in hard-hit Hong Kong geared up for a massive clean-up targeting the territory’s back alleys where germs might fester.

Researchers in the US said new tests to diagnose severe acute respiratory syndrome could be shipped as soon as next week. Other tests are being fine-tuned around the world after this week’s confirmation of the virus, a key step in finding drugs to treat the disease.

China’s newly reported death was in Inner Mongolia, adding to an upsurge in infections in China’s west and north. The spread of Sars through China’s vast hinterland is a particular challenge because the region lacks enough doctors and resources to cope with the disease.

Most of China’s 1,300 reported cases are in the relatively well-off southern province of Guangdong, where Sars first appeared, but the disease is spreading to poorer regions. One case has been confirmed in bleak Ningxia on the edge of the Gobi Desert, and 87 in the coal-mining province of Shanxi.

In India, where a majority of the country’s more than one billion people suffer from inadequate health care, the country’s first Sars case was confirmed yesterday.

Sars has killed at least 167 people world-wide, out of more than 3,000 infected. In addition to the 66 reported deaths in mainland China, there have been 65 fatalities in Hong Kong, 15 in Singapore, 13 in Canada, five in Vietnam, two in Thailand and one in Malaysia.

Following revelations that Beijing has more people sick than publicly reported, Communist Party leaders are warning Chinese officials not to hide Sars cases, the government’s Xinhua News Agency said today.

The party’s ruling inner circle, at a meeting yesterday led by President Hu Jintao, said officials will be personally responsible for fighting Sars, Xinhua said. “The meeting explicitly warned against the covering up of Sars cases and demanded the accurate, timely and honest reporting of the Sars situation,” Xinhua said.

In Hong Kong, a government report has found that the biggest outbreak of Sars there was spread in part by infected sewage that filtered through drains in one apartment building, and Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa is calling for a massive cleansing in the territory of 6.8 million people.

A campaign beginning tomorrow will target “environmental blackspots” such as rear alleys and old buildings that are cleaned less regularly than the gleaming bank towers and upper-end residential complexes Hong Kong is famous for.

Elsewhere today, Sars fears prompted South Korea and Japan to withdraw their teams from the 4th Asian Women’s Youth Volleyball Championship that will be held next week in Thailand.

Their withdrawal has forced organisers to change the draw and make it a round robin tournament.

Teams from Australia, China, India, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, North Korea, Taiwan and Thailand still plan to compete.

As Sars continues its march, leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plan to meet on April 29 in Bangkok to discuss how to cope with the disease’s spread.

Six of the 10 ASEAN countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – have reported cases of Sars.

South east Asian nations are expected to suffer sharp economic effects from the outbreak, particularly from an Asia-wide slowdown in tourism.