Beijing shuts theatres after nine new Sars deaths

Beijing’s government closed the city’s theatres, Internet cafes and other entertainment venues in an attempt to stop the spread of Sars as the Health Ministry today reported nine new deaths from the flu-like illness nationwide.

The closures were ordered to “stop possible spread of the Sars virus and ensure public health,” the official Xinhua New Agency reported. The measure was announced just days after the city shut down schools, sending home 1.7 million students.

Eight of the nine new Sars deaths were in Beijing and the city also accounted for 126 out of 161 newly reported cases, said ministry spokesman Deng Haihua. The new deaths lifted the Chinese mainland’s death toll to 131 with almost 3,000 people sickened across the country, Deng said.

Beijing’s entertainment shutdown came amid increasingly drastic official steps to contain severe acute respiratory syndrome, including the quarantine of thousands of people this past week in Beijing and the sealing off of at least three hospitals because of the disease.

A sign posted on the door of a cinema in eastern Beijing said, “Cultural and entertainment spaces are temporarily closed for business beginning today. Thank you for understanding.”

At Beijing’s South Cathedral, a sign in English pasted on the outer door said Mass was suspended for one month due to city Health Bureau rules requiring that “all congregations greater than 50 be cancelled.” The note didn’t elaborate and an accompanying sign in Chinese said only that services were cancelled to ensure the health of parishioners and clergy.”

A Protestant church nearby was closed, but there was no sign on its door.

With Beijing’s cases showing no sign of ebbing, hundreds of construction workers were working around-the-clock on a new 1,000-bed isolation camp for SARS victims in the rural district of Xiaotangshan on Beijing’s northern outskirts.

Workers were assembling plastic and metal panels into a honey comb of one-story rooms on a large field beside an abandoned factory, about a half-mile from the town.

Other new anti-Sars measures included raising the maximum fine for spitting in public – thought to be a means of transmission – by 1,000% to 50 yuan (£4) and the suspension of registration of marriages between foreigners and Chinese.

Registrations of marriages between Chinese citizens were unaffected, said an official at the city government’s Civil Affairs Department, who would only give his surname, Wang. He would not explain the dual policy, or say how it could control the disease.

Officials also have cut short the weeklong May Day vacation in an attempt to keep tens of millions of Chinese from travelling and possibly spreading the virus.

Even so, Beijing’s airport and train stations have been jammed with migrant workers, college students and expatriates fleeing the capital.

The length of the closures of entertainment venues will depend on progress made in combating the disease, which has killed at least 42 people and sickened 988 in Beijing, Xinhua said. Discos and karaoke parlours were also among places ordered darkened.

Public libraries also have been closed but will reopen on May 8, it said.

Beijing’s entertainment businesses have already suffered massive losses as nervous residents shun public places for fear of catching the virus.

Restaurants and shopping centres remained open today, although customers were few. Public parks, Tiananmen Square, and historical sites such as the Forbidden City – the sprawling former home of China’s emperors – were mostly empty because of a ban on Chinese tour groups travelling outside their home provinces.

The World Health Organisation has also advised travellers to avoid nonessential trips to Beijing.

The communist government has been widely criticised for failing to respond earlier to pleas for action. Ordinary Chinese complain that it didn’t give them information needed to protect themselves.

On Saturday, China replaced the health minister after he was blamed for not taking effective action on the disease. New Health Minister Wu Yi, also a vice premier, is a respected former trade envoy and already was the top official in charge of health care.