Beijing deploys SARS patrols

The worst-hit district of China8217;s capital sent thousands of investigators on a hunt for SARS on Tuesday and Motorola closed its China h...

The worst-hit district of China8217;s capital sent thousands of investigators on a hunt for SARS on Tuesday and Motorola closed its China headquarters in the city because a staff member there caught the disease.

The army of SARS investigators was the latest manifestation of China8217;s desperate fight against the sometimes fatal disease which triggered another riot by villagers furious that people from infected areas had been put among them.

8226; China reports 138 new cases, eight deaths
8226; An Indian citizen is among the three suspected foreign patients in Beijing
8226; HK reports nine new cases, six deaths
8226; Motorola shuts Beijing headquarters
8226; California university, Berkeley, to bar Asian students from attending summer classes

But Premier Wen Jiabao said the country8217;s plight remained 8216;8216;grave8217;8217; despite stepped-up prevention, detection and treatment of the disease which has struck hardest in Beijing, where almost 1,900 cases have now been confirmed.

8216;8216;Beijing has made progress in the fight against SARS, but the situation still remains grave,8217;8217; the official Xinhua news agency quoted Wen as saying.

8216;8216;A great deal of arduous work has to be done to bring the epidemic under control at an early date,8217;8217; Wen added.

China8217;s Health Ministry announced 138 new cases of SARS on Tuesday. It also reported eight more deaths, taking the toll in the world8217;s most populous and worst-hit nation to 214.

In Haidian, the Beijing district with more SARS cases than any other, some 30,000 investigators in 4,000 teams made rolling inspections of businesses, neighbourhoods and work sites, district official Zhou Liangluo told reporters.

Story continues below this ad

Twenty patrols have the job of making continuous examinations of the many construction sites in the district, China8217;s high-technology hub where many uninsured migrant labourers work.

8216;8216;For those who do not meet proper standards, they are put into overhaul and we8217;ll suspend their operations,8217;8217; said Zhou, who took no questions and did not go into detail.

Each household in the district of about 2.2 million people had been given a thermometer and emergency contact numbers and all offices and businesses had to install temperature monitoring systems, he said.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong said on Tuesday the virus had killed six more people and infected a further nine. The death toll there is 193.

Story continues below this ad

Elsewhere, there were signs that the epidemic which has caused widespread panic and hurt the travel industry severely was slowly coming under control.

Singapore reported its first case in three days as its death toll rose to 27 and the tourism board said a damaging drop in visitor arrivals due to SARS had probably bottomed out after a record plunge of 67 pc in April from a year earlier.

The Philippines reported seven more cases, taking its total to 10, but said they were all on their way to recovery.

However, in Beijing, the news got gloomier. Motorola, the world8217;s second biggest mobile phone maker and one of the biggest foreign investors in China, closed its Beijing headquarters after an employee came down with the dreaded disease.

Story continues below this ad

It told about 1,000 employees to work from home until next Monday after 27 workers had close contact with the infected employee, spokeswoman Mary Lamb said.

Other foreign firms have also closed offices or pulled employees out of China, reflecting a fear of the little-understood disease and, in some cases, lack of confidence in China8217;s ability to control the outbreak.

Villagers in coastal Zhejiang province reacted in fear. About 1,000 people in Gucheng rioted from Saturday to Monday demanding that people from SARS-infected areas now quarantined near their homes be moved, local people said. Reuters