China apologizes as world's health investigators track disease

FOSHAN, China -- In an extraordinary move, the Chinese government apologized Friday for not warning people quickly about the dangers of the deadly mystery illness that began here.

The apology came as international health investigators said they believed they were on the trail of the first person ever infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome.

"Today, we apologize to everyone," said Li Liming, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control.

"Our medical departments and our mass media suffered poor coordination," he said. "We weren't able to muster our forces in helping to provide everyone with scientific publicity and allowing the masses to get hold of this sort of knowledge."

Response criticized

China's communist government has been criticized abroad for responding slowly in the SARS outbreak and for withholding information. Just this week, Beijing agreed to allow international health investigators to visit the southern province where the disease first emerged.

On Friday, the investigators reviewed some of the earliest known cases as they followed the fading tracks of initial transmission across the bustling landscape of urban southern China.

Doctors from the World Health Organization met with health officials in Foshan, a maze of an industrial city in the hard-hit southern province of Guangdong, where the first SARS cases were reported. Of China's 46 reported SARS deaths, 40 have been from Guangdong.

The WHO team said one key to the disease's speedy -- yet seemingly erratic -- transmission could lie in how the apparent first case, a man who was not identified, passed it to four people without infecting his own four children. He survived and was released from the hospital in January.

"It's going to be a tricky task to find out what went on," said the WHO team's spokesman, Chris Powell. He said the team has not interviewed the man.

SARS has killed at least 85 people in Asia and Canada and sickened at least 2,300 in more than a dozen nations as infected travelers board airplanes and reach other continents in hours.

More than half the fatalities are from mainland China.

On Friday, a woman died of SARS in Singapore, the country's sixth death. Possible new cases were reported in Japan and Australia.

No cure has been found, though health officials say most sufferers recover with timely hospital care. Symptoms include high fever, aches, dry cough and shortness of breath.

Another important clue that WHO unearthed from data provided by Foshan health authorities: The illness, originally thought to be transmitted primarily through such direct contacts as coughing and sneezing, appears also to be passed indirectly.

Five of the 24 cases in Foshan show no actual "trace of transmission" to others, suggesting to investigators that infection can be spread by touching something tainted by a sick person's mucous or saliva.

"If you touch something and then you touch your mouth or your eyes, then you can become infected," Powell said. "This is a real mystery, and it's something they're going to try to have to solve."

As unease spread, warnings against travel led airlines to cancel scores of flights -- up to 18 percent in Hong Kong, which has the second-highest death toll after mainland China. Asian soccer authorities scrapped two Olympic qualifiers and were considering postponing others, while Lebanon refused to send its tennis team to Hong Kong for a Davis Cup match.

The Chinese disease center's apology on Friday came as ordinary people began to complain about their government's handling of the outbreak.

"They did not release enough information in the beginning. That's why people were so scared," said Chen Mao, a 67-year-old retiree who lives in Guangzhou. "They should have told us how to prevent the sickness. They should have taken better measures to sterilize areas and provide medication."

The WHO team, which arrived Thursday from Beijing, received government data indicating new cases of SARS were diminishing in Guangdong, Powell said.

The decline, he said, is due in part to safety measures in hospitals, such as wearing masks and goggles, preventing wide spread of the disease to doctors and nurses, previously one of the hardest-hit groups.

In Foshan, about a 30-minute drive south of Guangzhou, WHO says aggressive pamphleteering helped stem the disease. Foshan has reported no new cases, and few here wore protective surgical masks Friday.

Even so, Shen Qunlian, a server at the House of Congee restaurant, remains leery of sick customers.

"We work right across from a hospital," Shen said. "When we heard about the sickness, we bought white vinegar and drank it to disinfect ourselves and we didn't dare go out."