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Virus fear goes wild

Deaths, infections from killer pneumonia up

AFP, Hong Kong
Concern over the global spread of the killer SARS virus grew Wednesday as more deaths were reported in Hong Kong, additional cases were detected in North America and the worldwide number of infections approached 3,000.
In China, the epicentre of the outbreak, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts said they wanted to open an investigation in Beijing following allegations that the death toll from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was higher than official figures stated.
The economic impact of the outbreak worsened as more airlines cut flights to affected areas and businesses across the region felt the pinch of the downturn in international travellers.
In Hong Kong, one of the worst-hit areas, another two deaths were reported and 42 new cases were detected, raising the territory's death toll to 27 and the number of infected to 970, health officials said.
They continued a grim trend of multiple daily deaths and accelerating infections in the territory after health officials last week said the outbreak was ebbing.
The global death toll from SARS now stands at 106, with 2,939 infected.
Canada, the worst hit country outside of Asia, overnight reported its detected cases of SARS had risen by six to 242. The only good news was that a suspected 11th SARS-related death was cleared of any link to the virus.
Earlier, US health authorities said another 33 sufferers had been detected since Friday, bringing the total of SARS cases to 148 with no deaths.
WHO experts searching for the origins of the outbreak in China urged officials there to come clean on the scale of the disease after a Time magazine report in which a doctor claimed the capital's main hospital for SARS cases had admitted 60 patients with the virus, of whom seven died.
This contradicted health ministry figures of 19 infected and four dead.
The report echoed allegations by other nurses and doctors that the true extent of the virus' spread had been covered up by the authorities, adding to international criticism of China's slow response in addressing the disease.
The WHO now wants to lead as extensive an investigation in Beijing as it did in the southern province Guangdong, where the disease was first
detected in November and where the majority of China's 1,279 officially tallied cases and 53 deaths occurred.
Meanwhile, fears of the spread of SARS -- thought to be related to the common cold-causing coronavirus -continued to take its toll on the global economy as travellers and businessmen kept away from SARS-hit areas.
As Manila considered issuing a travel warning to Filipnos wanting to go to Hong Kong, the territory's five-star hotels were reportedly struggling with occupancy rates of just 10 per cent. Similarly, Indonesian and Vietnamese resorts reported slumps in arrivals of between 30 and 40 per cent.
In Thailand -- where two people have died with SARS -- travel agents warned that the strategically important tourism sector faced the worst crisis in its history, while in Vietnam, with four reported deaths, hundreds of mostly European businessmen snubbed a major international trade show in Hanoi.
Malaysia, which has recorded one death, took steps to ease the spread of SARS by temporarily freezing the issue of visas to Chinese and Hong Kong travellers.