Sars Claims Young Victims in Hong Kong

Health officials in Hong Kong are trying to establish why six relatively young patients suffering from Sars - the pneumonia-like disease which has spread from the mainland - have died.

Most of the fatalities so far have been older people, or ones with existing chronic problems. Some experts are afraid that the virus may be mutating.

Hong Kong has reported 1,190 cases and 47 deaths. About 20% of patients have been discharged from hospital. Though no cure has been found, many patients have responded well to early treatment.

About 3,000 people worldwide have been infected with the illness, most of them in Asia.

The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, broke his silence about the crisis at the weekend, paying a visit to Guangdong province, where the first cases appeared in November.

He met the Hong Kong chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, and assured him of China's support for the territory. Guangdong officials are accused of having covered up the extent of the crisis, so that Hong Kong was unprepared when the virus arrived.

Mr Hu hinted that he was unhappy with Guangdong's handling of the disease, saying that provincial and urban authorities should act on the principle of "putting the interests of the people first".

"Questions remain about the degree of transparency across Guangdong and beyond," the Hong Kong daily South China Morning Post said in an editorial yesterday. It hoped Mr Hu had sent officials there. "More clear-sighted and tough action is needed now."

In Beijing, World Health Organisation officials inspected health facilities yesterday after unofficial claims that the number of Sars cases in the capital was much higher than has been admitted.

The government says it has only 31 cases, of whom four have died. There is confusion about its definition of cases, and whether admissions to military hospitals are included.

The WHO has added Beijing to its list of Sars-affected areas, saying that cases of local transmission are occurring.

It says it is concerned about the way the Beijing health authorities have handled "case reporting and contact tracing".

The total number of cases in China was updated to 1,418 yesterday, most of them in Guangdong. Only four other provinces have reported cases so far, but as Fujian, on the coast, joined the list yesterday there was speculation that Sars may have spread much further.

Shanghai said yesterday that seven foreign residents suspected of having Sars had been cleared, and the city still had only one confirmed case.

The Chinese media, which was gagged on the subject for a month while the national people's congress, the annual parliament, was being organised, is now giving prominence to the epidemic, together with frequent advice on how to minimise the risk.

But China's biggest trade fair will open in the provincial capital of Guangdong, Guangzhou, today as planned, in spite of the fear that domestic and foreign visitors may spread the virus further.

Yesterday a German biotechnology company began distributing a test for the virus, which has now killed at least 137 people worldwide.

The company, Artus GbmH of Hamburg, said that the two-hour test would make quick diagnosis easier and slow down the spread of the virus.

It said the test was effective in "the very early stages" of infection. Other tests only worked 10 to 20 days after infection, it added.

The test was developed by scientists at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg.

The institute said last month that it believed Sars was caused by a new form of the coronavirus, one of the few viruses that can cause the common cold.

Artus said that its test could detect the genetic sequence of the virus in throat swabs, saliva and fecal samples, producing results within two hours.

Other labs have developed similar tests, but none had been introduced commercially so far, it said.

It said diagnostic kits would be provided free from its offices in Germany, the United States and Malaysia, until it had proved its worth. It would then sell the kits. It did not say what the price would be.