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Cops seek virus carriers
04/04/2003 14:43 - (SA)
Hong Kong - A manhunt is on for hundreds of residents of an apartment complex in Hong Kong infected with the deadly Sars disease who fled before their homes were hit with a tough quarantine order, police said on Friday.
A task force of 30 police officers has been created to track down members of 58 at-risk families who lived in Amoy Gardens, the high-rise housing block at the centre of Hong Kong's killer virus scare.
The families - whose members could number as many as 250, a government source told AFP - left their homes before the Kowloon estate was sealed on March 31 and its residents either hospitalised with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) or put in isolated quarantine camps.
It is feared some of the hunted family members may be infected with the mystery virus and police said their presence in the general population posed a danger to the entire territory.
"We now appeal to the... families whose whereabouts are still yet to be established to come forward to contact the Department of Health to protect their own health as well as that of the persons offering them accommodations," police spokesman Chief Superintendent Tang How-kong said on Friday.
He said 55 of the 113 families of the estate's Block E had been tracked down.
The task force has been created in the crowded Kowloon district's Kowloon East Regional Crime Headquaters.
Health authorities have hospitalised 237 Amoy Gardens residents in the past week and sent some 250 to quarantine centres in hastily converted holiday camps in Hong Kong's remote hillsides.
Amoy Gardens, a housing block in the industrial Ngau Tau Kok district, was closed on Monday and health experts in white protective gear sent in to find out how the disease was tramsitted among the residents.
Health chief Yeoh Eng-kiong said results from the probe so far had not supported fears that the virus had mutated from a water-droplet carried variant to a more dangerous airborne strain.
Police also said Friday they were still hunting for five people who had not reported to health chiefs for check ups after being put on an at-risk list.
The five are among more than 1 000 urged to submit to daily medical checks over 10 days to see if they were suffering from the SARS virus that has killed 17 in the territory and infected 761, authorities said.
The missing five are being treated as missing persons by police.
- AFX
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