Materia Medica Malaysiana

SARS mechanism will not be up just yet, says Pak Lah

BANGKOK: Malaysia will only activate its mechanism to prevent the spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) if the situation in Singapore warrants such action, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said yesterday.

He said one SARS case had been confirmed on the island but Malaysia would not reinstate screenings and thermal scanners at entry and immigration points yet.

“We do not want to take actions that will imply that the situation is so serious as it will affect tourism and economic activities,” he told Malaysian journalists here.

Abdullah, who concluded his two-day working visit to Thailand with a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said, however, Malaysia was closely monitoring the case in Singapore with Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng in close contact with his counterpart in the republic.

“Our anti-SARS mechanism can be activated at very short notice,” he said, adding that he expected to get a detailed report from Chua soon.

In Putrajaya, SA’ODAH ELIAS reports that Chua had directed all state health departments, especially Johor, to be on the alert.

He said the ministry was told by its Singapore counterpart that the patient, a 27-year-old Singaporean medical student, did not show any lower respiratory problem and his chest X-ray was also clear.

”The ministry will wait for confirmation from the World Health Organisation on the status of the man before deciding on its next course of action,'' he told reporters, after presenting the A-grade certification for overall cleanliness to food operators at all Projek Lebuhraya Utara-Selatan rest areas along the North-South Expressway.

“We have already verified with Singapore that all the people that the patient had come into contact with after Aug 26 have been identified and none of them is showing any SARS symptom,” he said, adding that the patient had since been isolated at the island's Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

In Singapore, NELSON BENJAMIN reports that the island's Health Ministry had confirmed that the patient who worked in a hospital laboratory had been tested positive for the SARS virus; making him the first case in the republic after the SARS outbreak which killed 32 people several months ago.

Its acting health minister Khaw Boon Wan said the situation had been contained and did not pose a serious public health risk, as the patient was isolated early.

”We have also sent another sample to the Centre for Disease Control in the United States for further verification,” he said, adding that the test results were expected to be known next week.

Khaw said the ministry had formed a team to track down the source of the virus and it was still too early to say whether the student contracted it from the laboratory.

He said the student, who was researching West Nile virus at a microbiology laboratory in National University of Singapore (NUS), developed fever on Aug 26 and was treated with antibiotics but when his fever persisted, sought treatment at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) on Aug 29.

“As his chest X-ray was normal, he was diagnosed as having viral fever and allowed to go home,” Khaw said, adding that on Sept 3 the man was hospitalised when he returned to SGH.

Khaw said his ministry had already informed the WHO of the latest case but, according to them, it did not fulfil the case definition for SARS under the new WHO post-SARS guidelines.

He said the patient, who was “clinically” doing well and had no fever since Sept 5, had not visited any SARS-affected country or travelled outside Singapore in recent weeks.

Director-general of public health Daniel Wang said all 23 laboratory staff had been tested negative for the virus.