New SARS alert in Hong Kong as nine elderly hospitalised




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New SARS alert in Hong Kong as nine elderly hospitalised

Yahoo News, September 19, 2003

Click for Large Photo An elderly man offers frogs for sale, alive or butchered on the spot, at a pavement market outside a housing estate in Hong Kong. Although the neighboring Chinese province of Guangdong temporarily banned the trade of more exotic culinary wildlife such as civet cats, raccoon dogs and badgers in late May in response to the outbreak of the SARS virus -- which is thought to have jumped from animals to humans and killed more than 900 people worldwide -- frogs, snakes and tortoises continue to remain a stable cuisine for many in Hong Kong and southern China. A recent spate of SARS alerts has stoked fears that the killer virus will come back to haunt Hong Kong.(AFP/Richard Brooks)

A mother carries her son at the Princess Margaret Hospital, Hong Kong. Another HK hospital has raised a new SARS alert after nine residents of a home for the elderly were treated for fever and respiratory tract infection, a health department spokesman said.(AFP/File/Laurent Fievet)

HONG KONG (AFP) - A Hong Kong hospital has raised a new SARS alert after nine residents of a home for the elderly were treated for fever and respiratory tract infection, a health department spokesman said.

"We are still awaiting results of further tests," he said Friday.

All nine were said to be in a stable condition at Tseung Kong O Hospital in the eastern Kowloon district, he said.

The incident comes after a similar SARS alert in which the first stage of a new three-tier SARS warning was raised for first time early this week.

Seven patients at Hong Kong's Castle Peak Hospital on Wednesday developed high fever and upper respiratory tract infections -- symptoms of the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus -- but later tests showed flu.

On Tuesday, a 34-year-old Hong Kong woman suspected of having SARS was cleared by health officials, easing fears of a re-emergence of the disease which killed nearly 300 people in the territory earlier this year.

Earlier this year SARS struck down more than 8,000 people and left more than 900 dead in 32 countries, with some 349 of the fatalities and 5,327 of the infections recorded in China.

Hong Kong was the second worst-affected region by with 297 SARS-related deaths and nearly 1,800 infections.