RP reports first suspected SARS case

President Arroyo reported the first "probable" case of the killer pneumonia case in the Philippines yesterday, but said the 64-year-old male foreigner had since been cured.

"The bad news is we had our first probable SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) case. The good news is that the patient has been cured," Mrs. Arroyo told reporters.

Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit said the unnamed 64-year-old patient splits his time between Hong Kong and the Philippines. The Philippines had so far remained free from the pnuemonia-like SARS that has hit hard many of its Southeast Asian neighbors.

"A week before, he went shopping in the Philippines. He had fever and was immediately confined. During confinement he had positive influenza infection," but laboratory results later showed his ailment "was not consistent with influenza."

"Our authorities quarantined him and traced people who he had contact with and diagnosed them," Mrs. Arroyo said. "Thankfully, after treatment (with broad-spectrum antibiotics), the patient recovered and is now fully cured. None of the people he had contact with (in the past 10 days) had shown signs of any sickness."

While the World Health Organization said that a person who may be a probable SARS case is no longer a carrier 48 hours after the fever has subsided, the President ordered the patient to be confined for another week for observation.

Dayrit said he no longer had a fever, adding: "We are going to make sure he is really cured."

The patient "was actually treated not as a SARS patient but as a haemophilus influenza patient because this patient actually never developed the severe signs of SARS, which is respiratory distress," Dayrit said.

The health chief said he was using the term "probable" to describe the symptoms in the patient because "until a specific diagnostic tool is found after the virus has been isolated, all of these cases are labeled probable SARS."

"Whenever there are symptoms, a history of travel, a history of contact with a SARS patient, you call that person a SARS suspect," he said.

Dr. Remigio Olveda, director of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), said the country’s first "probable" SARS cases first went to them for tests.

After initial results identified him as a suspected SARS case, the foreigner asked to be transferred to a private Metro Manila hospital, Olveda said.

RITM now only has one suspected SARS case confined in one of their isolation rooms, a female patient who has a history of travel to Hong Kong.

The Philippines joins 19 other countries that have reported SARS cases, including Indonesia, which also reported its first incidence Friday. The disease has claimed at least 111 lives worldwide and sickened more than 2,700 people. Mainland China and Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia have reported deaths, with the highest numbers in China and Hong Kong.

Mrs. Arroyo appealed to everyone coming from SARS-affected countries to voluntarily quarantine themselves for seven days at home even if they don’t show symptoms.

She also ordered airport authorities to request airlines from Hong Kong, the rest of China and Singapore to institute pre-departure medical screening of passengers bound for the Philippines.— Marichu Villanueva, Rainier Allan Ronda, AFP