Deadly bug puts air staff on alert
By Beezy Marsh and Andrew Loudon, Daily Mail
Last updated at 09:11 18 March 2003
Airline staff have been put on alert for the deadly lung disease spreading across the world after it emerged a businessman had carried it to Britain.
Staff of British Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Emirates were warned yesterday to look for symptoms of the mystery illness which causes severe pneumonia and has already claimed nine lives.
The four airlines fly into Manchester where Britain's first suspected case, a 64-year-old businessman, is being treated.
He arrived from Hong Kong on Saturday on KLM flights via Amsterdam and was moved to an isolation unit after reporting to Wythenshawe Hospital yesterday with a fever and breathing difficulties.
Last night he was in a stable condition at North Manchester General Hospital.
A British Airways spokesman said its 1,000 cabin crew based at Manchester had been told to be extra-vigilant in looking for signs of illness among passengers.
She added: 'We are following World Health Organisation guidelines and we are aware that this condition can be spread by travel.'
At the weekend the World Health Organisation issued a global alert over the disease, which first struck in China in February.
The man, who is in quarantine in the infectious diseases unit of the North Manchester General Hospital, flew in from Hong Kong - where one person has died and 95 are infected - on Saturday.
Teams of infection control doctors from the Public Health Laboratory Service are poised to attempt to control an outbreak if more cases emerge and GPs have been warned to be on high alert.
A Department of Health spokesman said: 'We think this is a serious situation but we do not want people to be alarmed.'
Suspected cases were also reported earlier this week in Germany and Slovenia. Airports around the world have ordered their staff not to check in passengers with symptoms of the disease.
Philippine airport officials said they were spraying anti-viral agents inside aircraft coming from infected countries and pharmacies were reporting a brisk trade in surgical masks.
British virology expert Professor John Oxford, of Queen Mary's College in London, said that it was becoming more unlikely that the virus was influenza - the most frightening scenario for doctors.
The last great flu pandemic in 1919 claimed more than nine million lives around the world.
Professor Oxford said: 'If it was influenza, I expect we would have heard this by now. That's certainly rather reassuring.'
News of the virus is having a knock-on affect on travel with tourists already starting to cancel trips to the Far East, where the most cases have been recorded.
Two major tour operators have postponed group visits to Vietnam, where dozens of cases have been reported.
In the UK, plans by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to travel to the country next week were still going ahead.
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