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| Italy steps up anti-SARS efforts |
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Italy will deploy more doctors at its airports to check the health of passengers arriving from the SARS-affected areas, the office of Premier Silvio Berlusconi said on Sunday.
Italy will ask its European partners to adopt the same measures against the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) at their airports, the office said in a statement.
"In order to guarantee the highest possible level of control aimed at preventing the spread of SARS, Italy will ask the European Union Commission and individual European states to apply the same health filters as Italy with regard to flights from high risk areas," it noted.
Berlusconi put the head of the Civil Protection Department, Guido Bertolaso, in charge of coordinating the country's anti-SARS policies.
Italian Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia said Sunday he had sent a message to EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne asking for security measures to be put in place at a European level.
The calls came as health officials in Rome began contacting passengers who flew into the Italian capital last week on the same flight as a Chinese woman suspected of having SARS.
The 31-year-old Chinese woman was admitted on Saturday to Rome's Spallanzani hospital, one of the two in Italy that are dealing with the SARS virus, after coming down with a dry cough and a high fever.
The Rome airport authorities were taking down contact numbers for all passengers landing in Rome from areas considered risky.
SARS, which has a mortality rate of about 6 percent, has killed more than 300 people worldwide and infected 5,270, according to local media reports. The majority of cases have been registered in Asia and Canada. Italy has had three suspected cases by now.
Italian Interior Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano said Saturday the Italian government was considering suspending flights to areas with a high rate of SARS.
Source: Xinhua News Agency
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