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SARS scare tests Beijingers'
mettle
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - Long sheltered from bad news by their
image-obsessed government, the residents of the Chinese
capital are undergoing a test of maturity in the current
crisis over the spread of atypical pneumonia.
Over the past week, the sudden deluge of
information about severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS) here has driven the city of 9 million people to
the brink of hysteria.
Like a city stricken by
the plague, Beijing is gripped by fear, panic and rumors
about a full quarantine from the outside world.
Thousands of people are trying to flee and others are
frantically stocking up on groceries.
"It is
impossible to live like this," complained Ding Shuhui,
who had stood in a queue for hours to buy soy sauce,
cooking oil and rice. The government "advised us to buy
in bulk to avoid shopping every day but when we set on
doing that, the shelves are either empty or one has to
queue".
Beijing recorded 89 new cases and four
deaths on Thursday, pushing the total to 774 cases and
39 deaths, according to figures released by the Ministry
of Health. Indeed, Beijing has overtaken Hong Kong as
the SARS hot zone. The accumulated number of SARS cases
in China stood at 2,422 with 110 dead.
A third
hospital in Beijing was sealed off on Friday as fears
mounted that SARS patients there had infected many
medical staff. Ditan hospital, designated as one of the
infectious diseases institutions fit to deal with SARS
patients, was quarantined after the previous closure of
People's Hospital of Peking University and the 302
military hospital.
Many queued at railway
stations and airports, trying to leave before the
government banned all travel in or out of a city where
the death toll has kept rising. Officials are concerned
by the number of migrant workers leaving Beijing and
possibly carrying the virus back to their home
provinces.
"Migrant workers and students are
forbidden to leave and outsiders are already being
stopped from entering the city," said Zhao Wenren, a
taxi driver. "Now you can still leave but later, people
say, you won't be allowed back in."
People could
be seen around the city emptying supermarket shelves and
carting home as much as they could before the start of a
three-day holiday on Thursday, May 1. Some said that
their shopping spree was because they feared that soon,
peasants would be excluded from delivering supplies of
fresh vegetables, meat and fish. Others said it was
because they had heard that all shops would be closed
and disinfected.
Around the city, the police are
operating roadblocks to stop outsiders from coming in.
Squads of sanitation workers in masks and rubber gloves
were spraying disinfectant as the new mayor, Wang
Qishan, placed Beijing on an emergency footing after his
predecessor Meng Xuenong was fired last Sunday.
Wang Qishan ordered 1,000 hospital beds to be
prepared and is buying 1,000 artificial respirators, 30
more ambulances and 500,000 protective medical suits for
confirmed SARS patients, an indication that medical
authorities are preparing for the worst.
Many
people have stopped coming to work, claiming sickness or
the need to look after their children who were
discharged from school on Thursday for a two-week
holiday.
"I was trying to get a document
notarized at the Municipal Notary Office today but they
told me they had only half of their employees, and were
not able to process any documents," complained lawyer
Zhang Xin.
The normally crowded four-story IKEA
store was almost entirely empty of customers, and so was
the neighboring big Dazhong supermarket. With occupancy
down to as low as 20 percent, the city's luxury hotels
have begun renting out just a few floors of rooms while
sterilizing the others on a rotation basis, the Beijing
Youth Daily reported.
Just about everyone in the
city center is now wearing surgical masks, and shop
assistants complain if people are not wearing one. Even
the once-overcrowded buses have few passengers;
meanwhile, sales of bicycles have risen.
Most of
the foreign community is evacuating after the foreign
schools suddenly announced that they were closing until
May 8. There are 135 reported SARS cases in 84 different
Beijing schools, including 69 university students and 30
staff.
Still, it is still widely believed that
the true picture of China's SARS epidemic has not yet
emerged.
Staff at one of Beijing's largest
hospitals, the People's Hospital of Peking University,
believe that officials have continued to understate
numbers, particularly among medical workers. According
to official data, 541 medical workers are infected
across China.
The 1,200-bed hospital was closed,
with staff saying that at least 60 doctors and nurses
have caught the SARS virus after they worked in a
makeshift isolation ward. Without proper facilities to
accommodate the growing numbers of suspected patients,
these and confirmed cases have been mingled together and
some have infected each other.
As the capital
increasingly feels like a city under siege, the
government has announced it is setting up a national
task force to combat SARS and has established a national
fund of two billion yuan (US$241 million) for the
prevention and control of the disease.
Officials
have called on medical workers and others to show
"greater understanding and compassion" for SARS
patients, whom the media describe as feeling "isolated
and depressed" and prone to lose their tempers with
medical workers.
Morale is a major problem and
the government has given the job of leading the campaign
to China's "Iron lady", Vice Premier Wu Yi, the only
woman in the 25-member Politburo of the Communist Party.
She will oversee an emergency program to set up a China
Center of Disease Control and Prevention to coordinate
reporting from around the country.
Wu Yi said
every citizen must join the campaign against SARS and
improve public hygiene. She called for "tough action"
against rumor-mongers and business people who are
exploiting the crisis by hoarding goods.
(Inter
Press Service)
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