Chairman of the Hospital Authority Leong Che Hung said on local government radio Wednesday that Hong Kong is now following a standard even stricter than the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention in an attempt to contain the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

The US guideline says so long as a patient has had the fever relieved, and both the X-ray and blood test showed improvement within a 48-hour period, he or she can basically be discharged.

"But we feel we need to be stricter than this partly because the living environment here is different from the United States and partly because this disease is so new," he said.

In short, a patient will need to be hospitalized for five more days even after showing such improvement, Leong said, stressing that this is now the universal standard across all public hospitals here.

Such a measure is important in containing the disease, even though both Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa and a Legislative Council document released Wednesday by the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau said the spread of the disease seems now under control.

"For the past two weeks, the number of additional confirmed cases per day has been on a declining trend. There have also been no new cases in clusters like Amoy Gardens in Kowloon Bay, Koway

Court in Chaiwan or Hing Tung Court in Tung Tau Estate in Wong Tai Sin," the document noted.

Speaking at the Legislative Council's Health Panel meeting Wednesday, Thomas Yiu, deputy secretary for Health, Welfare and Food of the government, said that as at 1 p.m. on April 28, a total of 1,557 patients admitted to public hospitals have been confirmed with SARS. Of them, 350 or 22.5 percent are health care workers or medical students.

After intensive cleansing, disinfecting and quarantine measure at Amoy Gardens -- a major infection cluster whose residents account for 21.1 percent of all confirmed cases -- the situation there has stabilized with only one case reported in the nine days from April 20 to 28, Yiu said.

So far, a total of 710 patients, or 45.6 percent, have recovered and been discharged from pubic hospitals, of whom 42 were discharged on April 28, he said.

There have been 138 fatal cases, most of whom had a history of chronic diseases, Yiu said, adding regrettably there is a growing number of younger deaths whose illness severe and did not respond to treatment.

At the moment, all SARS patients in Hong Kong have been or are treated with western medication only, as there is a lack of a mechanism to give a combined play to western and Chinese herbal medicine.

But Yiu said among the 709 patients remaining in hospitals as of April 28, most of them were showing positive responses to the treatment protocol.

At the meeting, Legislative Councilor Tang Siu Tong has praised the Director of the Hospital Authority, Ko Wing Man, for his proactive attitude and diligence in leading public hospital staff here in treating and containing the disease.

"I think we need to be fair to Dr. Ko. This is a brand-new disease and we don't know where it comes from. All we can do is to maintain personal health and observe good personal hygiene and environmental hygiene. ... Many things are still at the trial stage," he said.

"Also, the front-line medical staff should be given much praise. So far from what I know, no doctor has fled from their duties, or because of this (the difficulties involved), demanded more subsidies or pay from the government. So, I think Dr. Ko should be accorded high acclaim," Tang said.

(Xinhua News Agency April 30, 2003)