United Press International - April 3, 2003
Ed Lanfranco

The minister's comments came one day after the World Health Organization issued a travel warning to southern China's Guangdong province and the bordering Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Officials from the WHO finally were allowed to visit Guangdong province Wednesday morning. Guangdong is the place where, in mid-November, the earliest case of the disease called SARS is thought to have appeared. A multinational group of health experts from the United Nations has been in Beijing for a week, their third visit in 2003, trying to get to the geographic source of the new disease.

Until now, China has been secretive with data regarding the spread of any illness within its borders and highly sensitive to comments or criticisms.

Chinese health officials typically say nothing about an outbreak of disease until after a solution had been found and implemented.

After reading a prepared statement, Zhang noted, "It is very rare for the Ministry of Health to hold a press conference, but public health is a very important issue for the development of the country and its relations with the outside world."

Foreign participants -- ranging from the rock band The Rolling Stones to U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney -- have withdrawn from several major political, economic, sports, and cultural events scheduled to take place in China during April.

United Press International asked the minister to compare his organization's response to SARS, which cropped up first in China, with AIDS -- a problem the country long denied having and Chinese health representatives have frequently termed, "a foreign disease."

"Neither I nor anyone within the this department has ever called AIDS a foreign disease," Zhang said, adding, "the exact pathogen of SARS is still unknown and global cooperation is needed for successfully handling this disease."

Zhang said China has performed epidemiological and clinical analysis of the disease and listed four basic characteristics:

-- An onset period of winter and autumn when individuals are more susceptible to respiratory diseases;

-- Clinical symptoms of a sustained fever and dry cough;

-- Transmission mainly by air droplet at a close distance; and

-- The ability of health officials to prevent and cure the disease, with recovery in a majority of cases.

WHO officials, speaking at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday, said SARS has a mortality rate of less than 4 percent worldwide.

The latest Ministry of Health figures show that as of March 31, there have been a total of 1,190 reported cases in all of China. Guangdong province has had 1,153 cases, 12 in Beijing, 11 in Guangxi (next to Guangdong), plus the inland provinces of Hunan with seven, Shanxi four, and Sichuan three cases of SARS.

There still are no officially confirmed cases of SARS in Shanghai, however unconfirmed reports indicate between one and four cases in China's showcase city.

Thus far, China has experienced 46 fatalities: 40 in Guangdong, and three each in Beijing and Guangxi. Zhang reiterated that the cases in Beijing involve outsiders coming to the nation's capital.

Some residents in China's capital remain worried and do not trust pronouncements from the Ministry of Health.

Reflecting what appears to be growing concern, perhaps fueled by "xiaodao xiaoxi" (small street news), dozens of people in Beijing were seen wearing surgical masks around the city both before and after Zhang Wenkang's news conference on Wednesday. UPI saw only two people in the city of 13 million wearing masks.

In eastern Beijing's Chaoyang district, UPI asked several people why they were wearing such protective devices. The answers reflected a lack of confidence in the central government's ability to be honest when it comes to public health.

One respondent, a woman in her early 40s who refused to give her name, said she had seen Zhang speaking on state-run television Tuesday night and thought the situation was worse than he had stated.

"They don't put this kind of thing on TV unless it's serious," the woman said.

"I bet they tell you the disease is under control and that everything is fine," another woman in her mid-20s and giving only her surname of Li, told UPI. "It must be really bad if they're talking to you foreign reporters," she added.

A masked man, stepping out of a major transit hub in Beijing's burgeoning subway system, said, "Who knows what's going on? I'm not taking any chances."

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