HEALTH-CHINA: SARS Tests Maturity of a Usually Sheltered Public

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Apr 25 2003 (IPS) - Long sheltered from bad news by their image-obsessed government, the residents of the Chinese capital are undergoing a test of maturity in the current crisis over the spread of atypical pneumonia.

Long sheltered from bad news by their image-obsessed government, the residents of the Chinese capital are undergoing a test of maturity in the current crisis over the spread of atypical pneumonia.

Over the past week, the sudden deluge of information about the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) here has driven the capital of nine million people to the brink of hysteria.

Like a city stricken by the plague, Beijing is gripped by fear, panic and rumours about a full quarantine from the outside world. Thousands of people are trying to flee and others are frantically stocking up on groceries.

"It is impossible to live like this," complained Ding Shuhui, who had stood in a queue for hours to buy soya sauce, cooking oil and rice. "They (the government) advised us to buy in bulk to avoid shopping everyday but when we set on doing that, the shelves are either empty or one has to queue."

Beijing recorded 89 new cases and four deaths on Thursday, pushing the total to 774 cases and 39 deaths, according to figures released by the Ministry of Health. The death toll from mainland China rose by 125, but there were no deaths reported outside Beijing.

A third hospital in Beijing was sealed off Friday as fears mounted that SARS patients there had infected many medical staff. Ditan hospital, designated as one of the infectious diseases institutions fit to deal with SARS patients, was quarantined following the closure of People s Hospital of Beijing University and the 302 military hospital earlier on.

Many queued at railway stations and airports, trying to leave before the government banned all travel in or out of a city where the death toll has kept rising. Officials are concerned by the number of migrant workers leaving Beijing and possibly carrying the virus back to their home provinces.

"Migrant workers and student are forbidden to leave and outsiders are already being stopped from entering the city," explained Zhao Wenren, a taxi driver. "Now you can still leave but later people say you won’t be allowed back in."

People could be seen around the city emptying supermarket shelves and carting home as much as they could before the start of a three-day holiday on May first.

Some feared that soon, peasants would be excluded from delivering supplies of fresh vegetables, meat and fish. Others said it was because they had heard that all shops would be closed and disinfected.

Around the city, the police are operating roadblocks to stop outsiders from coming in. Across the city, squads of sanitation workers in masks and rubber gloves were spraying disinfectant as the new mayor, Wang Qishan, placed Beijing on an emergency footing after his predecessor Meng Xuenong was fired Sunday.

Wang Qishan ordered 1,000 hospital beds to be prepared and is buying 1,000 artificial respirators, 30 more ambulances and 500,000 protective medical suits for confirmed SARS patients, an indication that medical authorities are preparing for the worst.

Many people have stopped coming to work, claiming sickness or the need to look after their children who were discharged from school on Thursday for a two-week holiday.

"I was trying to get a document notarised at the Municipal Notary Office today but they told me they had only half of their employees, and were not able to process any documents," complained lawyer Zhang Xin.

The normally crowded four-storey IKEA store was almost entirely empty of customers, and so was the neighbouring big Dazhong supermarket. With occupancy down to as low as 20 percent, the city’s luxury hotels have begun renting out just a few floors of rooms while sterilising the others on a rotation basis, the ‘Beijing Youth Daily’ reported

Just about everyone in the city centre is now wearing surgical masks, and shop assistants complain if people are not wearing one. Even the once-overcrowded buses have few passengers. Instead, the sales of bicycles have risen.

Indeed, Beijing and its nine million people have overtaken Hong Kong as the SARS hot zone. Until last week, officials had admitted to only 37 infections in the city, but now there are 39 known deaths and over 700 known cases.

Most of the foreign community is evacuating after the foreign schools suddenly announced that they were closing until May 8. There are 135 reported SARS cases in 84 different Beijing schools, including 69 university students and 30 staff.

Still, it is still widely believed that the true picture of epidemic has not emerged in China.

Staff at one of Beijing s largest hospitals, the People’s Hospital of Beijing University, believe that officials have continued to understate numbers, particularly among medical workers. According to official data, 541 medical workers are infected across China.

The 1,200-bed hospital was closed, with staff saying that at least 60 doctors and nurses have caught the SARS virus after they worked in a makeshift isolation ward. Without proper facilities to accommodate the growing numbers of suspected patients, these and confirmed cases have been mingled together and some have infected each other.

As the capital increasingly feels like a city under siege, the government has announced it is setting up a national task force to combat SARS and has established a national fund of two billion yuan (241 million U.S. dollars) for the prevention and control of the disease.

Officials have called on medical workers and others to show "greater understanding and compassion" for SARS patients, whom the media describes as feeling "isolated and depressed" and prone to lose their tempers with medical workers.

Morale is a major problem and the government has given the job of leading the campaign to China’s ‘Iron lady’, Vice Premier Wu Yi, the only woman in the 25- member Politburo of the Communist Party. She will oversee an emergency programme to set up a China Centre of Disease Control and Prevention to coordinate reporting from around the country.

Wu Yi said every citizen must join the campaign against SARS and improve public hygiene. She called for "tough action" against rumourmongers and business people who are exploiting the crisis by hoarding goods. (END/2003)