So far so good on the SARS front; the central government is doing everything--perhaps even too much--in its preventive measures against a potential full-force return of the disease. Here's the view from the Beijing bureau of The New York Times in an article by Jim Yardley:
BEIJING, Dec. 30 — Perplexed medical experts from China's Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization have ordered new rounds of tests for a man suspected of having SARS because previous results have been so contradictory that they cannot reach a diagnosis.
"We can't confirm that the patient is a SARS patient or that he is not," said Dr. Julie Hall, the SARS team leader in the organization's office in Beijing. She said his test results have "really been a mixed bag of negatives and positives."
On Tuesday, Dr. Hall said the Ministry of Health agreed to allow W.H.O. laboratories outside China to conduct additional tests on blood and other samples from the patient. She said the samples could be shipped out as soon as Wednesday, though she did not yet know when the testing would occur or at which labs.
New tests are also planned at the provincial health department in the southern city of Guangzhou, where the sick man is hospitalized, and at two laboratories in Beijing affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control. Dr. Hall said those tests could be delayed a few days as researchers await a shipment of control materials.
The decision to conduct more tests came after a long Tuesday meeting in Beijing between Chinese and W.H.O. experts, and also followed a confusing day in which a provincial health official in Guangzhou told a news agency that test results had caused the upgrading of the case from suspected to confirmed.
"The case has been confirmed," Feng Shaoming, the health official, told Agence France-Presse. "Our experts at the Center for Disease Control have made many tests and they are all positive."
But by early Tuesday evening, W.H.O. officials said that it was still too soon to give a diagnosis on the case and that it remained unconfirmed. The Ministry of Health said in a daily update on its Web site the status of the case was unchanged.
The handling of this case is being watched particularly closely given the harsh criticism directed at China for its early handling of the original SARS outbreak. The first person believed infected by SARS came from a suburb of Guangzhou in November 2002. Government officials initially covered up the existence of the disease as it spread through the population.
For the full story, with a good accounting of all details, read it in The New York Times
