2nd SARS suspect monitored since delisting by WHO

Barely a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) had stricken out the Philippines from the list of countries affected by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the Department of Health (DOH) recorded a second suspected SARS case.

Dr. Consorcia Quizon, head of the DOH’s National Epidemiology Center, however, said this should not be a "cause for alarm."

She said it is a normal occurrence for the Philippines to have "imported" SARS cases since the viral disease has not been totally wiped out.

Quizon said the second suspected SARS case was monitored in the Ilocos region, where the first suspected case since May 21 — the WHO delisting — was also recorded.

"It’s a female, in her 20s. I think she came from Taiwan last Friday or Saturday," she said. Taiwan is one of the countries hardest-hit by SARS.

Quizon said the two suspected SARS cases were monitored in Ilocos because the region has a "good surveillance system." She stressed this because she fears that Ilocos folk might suffer discrimination.

She said the woman developed fever, the initial symptom of SARS, and voluntarily submitted herself to hospital quarantine.

"We already contacted the people who came in contact with her. There was not much because she voluntarily underwent quarantine," Quizon told The STAR.

Meanwhile, the DOH and the World Health Organization (WHO) will coordinately closely with hospital officials in Hong Kong where the first suspected SARS case was admitted because of a brain tumor.

Quizon said the patient might have not been exposed to SARS while in the Hong Kong hospital because she was confined in the neurology ward. She refused to name the hospital.

She said the DOH wants to know the patient’s medical background to determine her risk of being infected with the killer disease.

The department transferred the patient to the San Lazaro Hospital last Tuesday to "better manage" her condition, especially since she suffers from a brain tumor.

Quizon said the two suspected SARS cases have not developed pneumonia, the concluding factor for a patient ill with SARS.

"They are under the close monitoring of our health workers. We hope they won’t develop pneumonia because it has been only a week since we were delisted by the WHO," she said.

The DOH’s anti-SARS program is now focused on the identification of "imported SARS cases" or those who contracted the disease while abroad, for fear that they might cause local transmission of the ailment.

The WHO delisted the Philippines after no local transmission had occurred for 20 days since 74-year-old Mauricio Catalon infected three relatives and two health workers.

Catalon, who succumbed to SARS on April 22, got the infection from his daughter Adela, a Canada-based nursing assistant who died of the disease eight days earlier.