Chinese Officials Failed to Raise Alarm Over Killer Viral Illness

Chinese authorities are investigating the rapid spread of an intestinal virus that has killed at least 20 children and infected almost 1,900.

A team of medical experts has been sent to Fuyang city, in eastern Anhui province, amid reports that parents there were keeping their children away from school and even sending them to the countryside.

Enterovirus 71(EV71) is a cause of hand, foot and mouth disease - characterized by a fever, ulcers and a rash with blisters. Identified in the 1960s, there have been several large recent outbreaks in Asia.

In Anhui around 400 children are hospitalized, 26 of whom are seriously ill. But 585 are now said to have recovered and the official Xinhua news agency reported that no fatal cases had occurred over the past five days. All affected were aged below six, with most under two.

Newspapers have been scathing in their criticism of local officials, attacking them for waiting weeks to raise the alarm and even comparing their approach to the initial cover-up of the Sars epidemic in 2003. That resulted in the sacking of the health minister and a pledge to create an "open and transparent" reporting scheme.

But yesterday Yang Weizhong, the deputy chief of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters: "You can't talk about EV71 and Sars in the same breath. Sars was a new infectious disease, and anyone could be infected."

He added that the delay in reporting was caused by the difficulty of identifying the problem. "In the initial stages of [this] probe a lot of effort was expended, to rule out some serious infectious diseases like Sars, bird flu and meningitis," he said.

The first cases of EV71 in Fuyang city emerged in early March, but the outbreak was only reported on Sunday - 40 days later. Since then the number of recorded infections has soared, with hundreds more daily and reports of cases emerging in neighboring Henan province.

Chen Xianyi, the head of the Ministry of Health's emergency response department, said: "The confirming of the cause of this illness, the raising of the treatment rate and clear improvement in preventative measures all came from the hard work of the central government. So I think it was reported in time."

The state English language newspaper, China Daily, asked whether lessons had been fully learnt since the Sars outbreak.

"The official warning against mass intestinal virus infection clearly came too late," it said in a commentary, adding that efforts to play down the possible severity of the outbreak might even have led people to ignore risks they could otherwise have avoided.

Enteroviruses spread mostly through contact with infected blisters or faces. There is no vaccine or antiviral agent for EV71 and treatment focuses on managing its complications, including meningitis and heart failure, according to the World Heath Organization.