Health
Ministry undersecretary Abdul Raheem al-Zaid said an expatriate woman
who returned to Kuwait from southeast Asia is being tested for Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"Doctors
suspected a lady of foreign origin showing symptoms similar to SARS
after returning to Kuwait from southeast Asia," Zaid said in a
statement carried by the state KUNA news agency.
The
woman is currently being quarantined in a Kuwaiti hospital and samples
from her have been sent to the Center for Disease Control in the United
States, he said.
If
confirmed as positive, it would be the first reported case of SARS in
the Gulf.
Zaid
said Kuwait was taking precautionary steps against the virus with all
passengers arriving from Asia.
SARS,
which first erupted in southern China, has been blamed for the deaths of
86 people around the world, with cases reported in 32 countries. The
only case reported in the Middle East had been in Israel.
On
Tuesday, April 1, the spokesman for the Kuwaiti Ministry of Defense,
Colonel Yousef Al-Mulla, denied that three Kuwaiti military personnel
have been isolated after being infected by SARS, reported the Kuwaiti Arab
Times.
A
Kuwaiti local daily newspaper had quoted military sources as saying that
the Military Hospital had isolated three military personnel who were
being treated in an isolated wing of the hospital after being diagnosed
with the disease.
The
Director of the Military Hospital , Colonel Ali Al-Essa, assured
citizens and expatriates that there are no such cases in the hospital
and confirmed that the news report was untrue and baseless.
The
Arab Times also noted that in
another incident, another Kuwaiti man whose identity has been withheld
has also been quarantined at Ibn Sina hospital after it was discovered
that he was suffering from a suspicious respiratory ailment.
A
medical source told Al-Watan daily that a technical
committee, assigned to study the case at Ibn Sina, is conducting tests
to identify the type of infection the man is suffering from.
The
total number of cases reported to the World Health Organization as of
April 2nd has been 2223 cases from 18 countries around the globe.
The
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Wednesday that
there were 85 cases of the disease in the United States .
In
an interesting development Tuesday, possibly indicating the extent of
paranoia beginning to affect the United States, American Airlines flight
number 128 bound to San Jose from Tokyo was detained on the tarmac for
two hours after two passengers and two crewmembers, plus a fifth
unidentified person, reported to the crew that they had symptoms similar
to those of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. None of the cases,
however, proved to be the deadly virus, and all passengers were allowed
to leave.
