New Sars outbreaks feared in Taiwan, Singapore

Singapore reported a possible outbreak of Sars at its biggest mental hospital and Taiwan said the disease may have spread to the island's south, threatening hopes that the deadly virus was slowly coming under control.

China, the world's worst affected country, intensified efforts to stamp out the widely prevalent practice of spitting in public as it announced the lowest daily tally of fresh Sars cases since the government began reporting accurate figures last month.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, for which there is no standard treatment, is spread mainly by droplets. More than 7,500 people in 30 countries have been infected and almost 600 have died.

Researchers in Germany said they had found a weakness in the virus and a drug being tested against the common cold could be modified to battle the pneumonia-like Sars. Such a drug could be designed in months, they said.

Governments around the world have been battling to stem the spread of Sars, isolating those infected, confining anyone believed to have been exposed to the virus in quarantine and implementing stringent checks at air and sea ports.

Those moves appear to have worked in Vietnam, where five people died earlier this year, and last month the World Health Organisation declared the country Sars-free. Singapore, with some of the world's strictest anti-Sars measures, looked to be headed in the same direction.

But the Singapore government said yesterday 27 patients and 10 workers at its Institute of Mental Health had been isolated with possible Sars, a slight rise from a total of 30 possible cases detected at the facility the day before.

It was unclear how they might have contracted Sars.

With the world's fourth-highest Sars death toll, Singapore had gone 15 days without a new infection - five days short of the WHO's target for being taken off a list of Sars-affected regions that includes China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Toronto.

"We can only sleep well when the whole world is rid of this virus or more likely a vaccine is available. That will take years," said Khaw Boon Wan, a Singapore cabinet minister who is the head of a task force to tackle Sars.

Singapore had quarantined more than 3,000 people at home, temporarily shut schools and barred visitors at hospitals while doing temperature checks at border posts.

There has been mounting concern about the economic impact of Sars on fast-growing China and other economies across the region. The world tourism industry, already in crisis, risks losing a further five million jobs this year, partly because of Sars, the International Labour Organisation said.

China reported sluggish retail sales figures for April and said economic expansion slowed in the month on a year-on-year basis compared with the first quarter.

Hong Kong's chief came under political pressure with opposition lawmakers saying he should resign because he had been too slow to act against Sars after it crossed from neighbouring southern China, where it first appeared late last year.

A motion calling on Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa to quit was defeated but analysts said the fact it was even put to a vote was damaging for Tung and his unpopular government.

Hong Kong is the world's second worst Sars-hit area after mainland China. In just 10 weeks, 1,698 people have been infected in the city and 227 of them have died.

Taiwan was relatively free of Sars until late April but cases have risen rapidly and about 240 people have been infected, most in the capital Taipei and other parts of the island's north.

On Wednesday, officials reported 19 suspected infections at a hospital in Kaohsiung in the south. They said it was likely a woman who visited a Sars-hit hospital in Taipei had spread the virus to 11 nurses and eight patients at the Kaohsiung hospital.

An additional 110 health workers at the hospital had been placed in quarantine.

But the biggest worry is China, where more than 5,100 people have been infected and more than 260 killed. Only 55 new cases were reported yesterday, down from a daily average of about 100 in previous weeks.

The disease there has been confined to Beijing and other big cities but there are fears migrant labourers could spread Sars to rural areas, where two-thirds of the country's 1.3 billion people live, and where public health facilities are poor.

The government has launched a campaign against spitting in public and discouraged internal travel.