SARS: The View From Beijing

Further to my last post, the Financial Times is taking rather a different line of attack. I think this reaction, and that at the Motorla Beijing headquarters is overdone, and, as is getting to be normal by now, I'm staying the distance with Stephen.

Motorola, one of the largest foreign investors in China, closed its headquarters in Beijing as nearly 100 new cases of Sars were reported in the Chinese capital. The number of new cases indicates that, despite nearly 16,000 people quarantined and recent official claims that the illness has "reached a plateau", the disease remains virulent in the city. Motorola said it had asked the 1,000 staff at its Beijing office to work from home after one of their employees contracted the virus. Beijing, the worst-hit city in the world, has been hit by more than 1,800 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome - nearly half China's total - and 103 deaths. Authorities reported 98 new cases on Monday in the city, which is increasingly cut off from the countryside around it as villagers erect roadblocks to insulate themselves from city visitors.

The disease has killed at least 206 people on China's mainland and made more than 4,200 sick, causing widespread economic damage. Schools in the capital are closed, some shops and entertainment venues shuttered and many offices are working with depleted staff levels. The level of government anxiety was further revealed on Monday by a report in the Beijing Youth Daily that authorities have isolated 80 reservoirs around the capital in order to protect the purity of drinking water. The measures will prevent vehicles and people from getting close to the water source, said the newspaper. In the central coastal province of Zhejiang, about 1,000 villagers surrounded a local government office to protest against the quarantine of suspected Sars patients near their homes.The villagers smashed and overturned police and government cars, and demanded that the patients be moved. Zhejiang, near Shanghai, has so far reported few cases of Sars but authorities are anxious to stop the virus from reaching China's largest city and its commercial centre.
Source: Financial Times
LINK