Guangzhou (China), Sept 14: With Singapore reporting a suspected SARS case this week, south China's Guangdong province, the epicentre of the first SARS outbreak, is on full alert against the possible resurgence of the deadly epidemic. "We are ready to face a possible return of SARS and have drafted a contingency plan that will see most medical experts responding to emergency calls within 30 minutes," an official from the Guangdong provincial government said here.
Under the contingency plan, 40 specialists in infectious diseases, respiratory medicine, intensive care and radiology will be on duty on a daily rotation basis. Guangdong was the source of the pneumonia-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus.
The first case of SARS was reported on November 16, 2002 in Guangdong's Foshan city. SARS then spread to Hong Kong and then to other parts of China by March this year, triggering a global panic and health alert. Fears of a new outbreak in China were raised earlier this week after Singapore confirmed that a 27-year-old post-graduate medical student had caught the disease, probably in a laboratory where the SARS virus was being cultivated.
China was the worst-hit country in this year's SARS outbreak worldwide, which reached its peak between April and June.
SARS struck down more than 8,000 people and left more than 900 dead in 32 countries, with some 349 of the fatalities and 5,327 of the infections recorded in china.
Meanwhile, an official from China's Ministry of Health has confirmed that no single suspected SARS case had reappeared on the Chinese mainland since August 16 this year when the last two SARS patients were discharged from a hospital in Beijing. Bureau Report