China has failed to report SARS infections in Beijing military hospitals and the capital could have up to 200 cases instead of the 37 reported officially, World Health Organisation officials said on Wednesday. The experts, wrapping up a five-day investigation into the outbreak in Beijing, called for full disclosure of cases in a country that has been criticised for not sharing information soon enough despite being the disease’s epicentre.‘‘Indeed there have been cases of SARS — there is no question about that — that have also not been reported officially,’’ German WHO virologist Wolfgang Preiser, who visited a military hospital in Beijing, said.‘‘The military seems to have its own reporting system which does not link in presently with the municipal one,’’ Preiser told a news conference. Asked how many cases Beijing probably had if military hospitals, which also treat civilians, were included, WHO official Alan Schnur replied: ‘‘I would guess the range would be between 100 and 200’’.The Beijing government figures include four deaths. But Schnur said a government campaign should prevent Beijing’s SARS cases reaching the level in the southern province of Guangdong, where SARS first appeared in November and which has reported 1,277 infections and 46 deaths. SARS has officially killed at least 65 people and infected 1,445 in China — nearly half of the world’s cases.Jiang Yanyong, 71, a surgeon at Beijing’s Number 301 military hospital and a Communist Party member for 50 years, took the extraordinary step last week of accusing Health Minister Zhang Wenkang of covering up the number of cases in Beijing.The WHO officials said Beijing’s Centre for Disease Control had not been transparent with its investigation into the origins of the city’s cases. ‘‘The Beijing CDC has done quite a good and thorough investigation on importations’’ into the city of 14 million, Schnur said. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, a group of scientists said on Wednesday that a more virulent form of SARS may be killing the young and healthy in one part of the city. Their findings are based on the condition of patients from the Amoy Gardens housing estate.SARS mostly takes the lives of the elderly and those already sick, but since Saturday there have been more deaths reported among younger people in Hong Kong. The scientists from the University of Hong Kong offered no firm proof of the existence of a deadlier form of the SARS virus, and research teams in Canada and the United States have not reached similar conclusions. (Reuters)
