China reports spike in SARS, sacks senior officials

They also cancelled the week-long May Day holiday to discourage people from travelling and further spreading the disease.

Elsewhere, authorities in Hong Kong said seven more people had died and 22 more were infected, taking the death toll in the city to 88, the highest in the world.

Singapore closed one of the city-state’s largest vegetable markets after three workers were infected by the disease, but did not report any new fatalities. China’s new SARS figures represented a 10-fold increase in

the number of cases in Beijing and appeared to back criticism that officials, initially at least, had tried to hide the extent of the disease. Authorities also said there were an additional 402 suspected cases of SARS in Beijing city.

Within an hour of announcing the new figures, the official Xinhua news agency carried a terse one-paragraph report saying Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing Deputy Party boss Meng Xuenong, the Mayor, had been sacked. No reason was given.

“There was no other way,” said a source with close ties to government leaders. “The situation in Beijing got totally out of control and someone had to be held accountable.”

The sackings were intended to put provincial leaders on notice that there should be no effort to cover up the spread of the disease, and to the world that China was serious about curbing the SARS outbreak, analysts said.

China’s Vice Health Minister Gao Qiang, the top health official after his boss was sacked, blamed the surge in cases on a health care system ill prepared to handle a sudden outbreak such as SARS, which emerged in Guangdong in November and has been spread around the world by air travellers since February. (Reuters)