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Tuesday May 06, 2003-- Rabi-ul-Awwal 03, 1424 A.H.
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SARS riots hit China as medical workers sacked

BEIJING: Villagers in two remote parts of China rioted and destroyed SAARS quarantine centers while an eastern city Monday put 10,000 people in quarantine amid fears the disease will spread to their areas.

Enraged that a SARS quarantine center would be set up in their community, more than 100 farmers attacked a government office in Yuhuan county, in eastern Zhejiang province, and beat up officials, a local police oofficial told AFP.

"Several people have been detained as a result of the incident," the official named Weng said by telephone. In another incident, villagers rioted from April 25 to 28 in Linzhou city, central Henan province, ransacking a planned SARS quarantine center and other medical facilities, Zhou Dawei, a local Linzhou official told AFP.

The Linzhou riot resulted in the May 2 sacking of the director of the city's health bureau Wang Songlin and the city's infectious diseases station head Wang Yuxi, Zhou said. At least 13 people in Linzhou were arrested. Only three cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) have been reported in Zhejiang, while 14 cases have been reported in Henan, according to the health ministry.

The riots reflected widespread concerns over the SARS epidemic spreading to China's rural hinterlands and follow an April 27 incident where some 2,000 villagers ransacked and torched a SARS quarantine facility in Chagugang village, near eastern Tianjin Social stability is starting to emerge as one of the casualties of China's war on SARS, which has killed 206 people and infected 4,280 nationwide.

Elsewhere around the country, several cities closed entertainment venues and schools while Nanjing put nearly 10,000 people in quarantine, the China News Service said. The aim was "no infections, no deaths, no spread", according to the news agency.

Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu province, which, according to official data, has just four confirmed cases. Mass isolation has become an increasingly popular measure as China struggles to contain SARS, and in the capital of Beijing alone more than 15,000 have been put under quarantine.

Beijing Monday also put its 80 reservoirs out of bounds to prevent the virus spreading to the city's water supplies, the China Daily reported. According to the latest health ministry statistics Monday, a total of nine new SARS deaths and 160 new cases, 98 of which were in Beijing, were recorded in China during the last 24-hour period.

The fatalities were in Beijing (three), Guangdong (three), Shanxi (two), and Tianjin (one). Beijing now has 103 dead and 1,897 confirmed cases, making it the hardest hit region by SARS in the world. Meanwhile, tough measures demanded by the central government on the quarantine of suspected and probable SARS cases have resulted in the sacking of at least 55 county-level government and health officials who failed to heed orders, state press reports said.

Such strident measures, coupled with fears of contracting the disease, also appeared to be affecting lower-level medical personnel as Beijing hospitals battling SARS began reporting a severe shortage in support staff.


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