Vietnam reports 5 new SARS cases after 10-day clear spell
Vietnam has detected five new SARS cases after a 10-day clear spell and health
officials are "deeply worried" about the spread of the mysterious flu-like virus.
The new cases, confirmed at Hanoi's Bach Mai hospital over the weekend, include a
doctor who treated a 67-year-old man hospitalised last Wednesday in serious condition,
and four members of his family.
Professor Le Dang Ha of the
hospital's institute of tropical
diseases said: "We are deeply
worried about the fact that more
and more new cases of SARS
have been found. It is very likely
than some others will show up."
All the new patients come from
Ninh Binh province, south of
Hanoi.
Until last Wednesday, Vietnam
had had more than 10 days
without any new cases, with
authorities claiming they had
contained the outbreak.
Vietnam has had 65 cases of SARS, of which four were fatalities and more than 30 were
cured.
Channel News Asia - April 7, 2003.
Five more infected with SARS in Vietnam
HANOI - Vietnam was coping with a new cluster of cases of the deadly pneumonia-like disease that has killed more than 80 people worldwide, all linked to one man who visited his son at the hospital that saw the original outbreak.
The 67-year-old man who took Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) to Ninh Binh province, 95km south of Hanoi, is in a critical condition and can only breath with a respirator, according to Le Quang Ha, head of the Bach Mai Tropical Disease Institute in Hanoi.
One of his doctors in Ninh Binh and four of his relatives were transferred to the Hanoi hospital over the weekend.
"They are suffering from high fever, aching bodies, high respiratory rate and need to be watched closely," Ha said.
Doctors and a team from the World Health Organisation are in Ninh Binh to detect any other possible infections from the first cluster outside Hanoi.
The elderly patient apparently was infected with SARS when he visited his son, who had had his appendix out at the Hanoi French International Hospital, the site of the original outbreak in Vietnam where staff and other patients apparently all caught the disease from a visiting Chinese-American businessman.
Vietnam was one of the first countries to quarantine all SARS patients, and for a week it looked like the fast action had stopped the disease from spreading. The Ninh Binh patient was the first reported in more than a week.
SARS has infected 65 people so far in Vietnam and killed four - two doctors and two nurses at the French Hospital.
Globally, more than 2 400 cases of SARS infections have been reported and around 90 people have died.
Sapa/dpa (.za) - April 7, 2003.
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