Hong Kong, May 03: The health chief acknowledged today that Hong Kong didn't respond quickly enough to the SARS out break because not enough was known about the disease, and officials reported 10 new cases - the lowest number in one day since March. "It's a fact we weren't speedy enough," health secretary Dr Yeoh Eng-Kiong said in a radio interview - in the most blunt admission yet by a top Hong Kong official that the reaction to SARS was tardy. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has sickened 1,621 people in Hong Kong and killed 179, including nine new deaths reported today. There were 10 new SARS cases reported in Hong Kong today, the lowest total since officials began reporting daily statistics in March. Eleven new infections were reported each yesterday and on Thursday. A Malaysian freighter ship bound for southern China has been given permission to sail into Hong Kong on Sunday because sea men aboard are sick with SARS-like symptoms, the Hong Kong government said.

The captain of the Bonga Melwais Satu radioed Friday when it was about 175 kilometers southwest of china's Hainan islands to request passage to Hong Kong to seek treatment for 10 of its 24 crew, officials said today.

Critics have charged that Hong Kong did not fight back as hard as it should have after SARS was recognized as a problem here in early march. They have noted that other places with outbreaks, including Singapore and Canada, were quicker to quarantine people who might have been exposed.

Bureau Report