Woman may have Sars, bird flu

2004-01-29 07:19

Hong Kong - A 74-year-old woman was being tested for bird flu and Sars in an isolation ward of a Hong Kong hospital on Thursday after entering the city from Vietnam with a fever, reports and officials said.

The woman, whose identity was not disclosed, was running a high temperature and was found to have shadows on her lungs after falling ill in Vietnam during the Lunar New Year holiday, newspaper and radio reports said.

Eight people have died from bird flu, which has also appeared in nine other Asian countries, in Vietnam in the past month.

The Hospital Authority (HA) denied reports that the woman had been cleared of either Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or bird flu.

The HA said it expected test results later on Thursday.

Hong Kong is on high alert for both bird flu and SARS, which killed almost 800 people in a worldwide outbreak last year, including 299 in the former British colony.

H5N1 bird flu first emerged in the city in 1997, killing six people.

Health officials have stepped up checks of travellers entering from disease-affected countries, and have routinely isolated and tested at least 160 people who entered from China's neighbouring Gunagdong province with a fever.

- AFP