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Situation grave: Chinese PM

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE April 14. China has, for the first time, characterised the situation arising out of the onset and spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) within the country as "grave''.

A recognition of this magnitude by the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, goes beyond the World Health Organisation's SARS-related concerns about specific places including the Chinese capital, Beijing, and the country's southern province of Guangdong. Some of the major cities that have been affected by the spread of SARS on a world-wide scale include Hong Kong, Singapore and Toronto. Singapore has remained in a state of high alert for several weeks now.

Speaking at a national conference in Beijing on the control of the epidemic, Mr. Wen said during the weekend that the prevention of the disease was the most urgent task before the country at present. While appreciating the steps already taken, he maintained that the overall situation remained "grave''.

The Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao, has assured the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong that Beijing would extend "full support'' to the territory's ongoing battle against the virulent spread of SARS there. Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, met Mr. Hu at the port city of Shenzhen during the latter's inspection tour of the SARS-hit Guangdong province. The political interventions of this kind by the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao team come in the context of international criticism of Beijing's suspected tardiness in recognising the gravity of the situation and against the backdrop of claims that China's specialists have identified a "coronavirus'', named for the organism's crown-like appearance in electron-microscope imagery, as a possible cause of SARS.

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