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American Morning

Trail of SARS

Aired May 12, 2003 - 09:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Seventy-five new SARS cases being reported today in China. That pushes the neighbor of infections there past 5,000. The World Health Organization concerned about another large-scale outbreak in China. Laurie Garrett of "Newsday" is the author of "The Coming Plague." She's live in Beijing with us today.
Laurie, thanks for your time here on AMERICAN MORNING.

I want to know what the take is right now. Fewer than 100 new cases of SARS reported, I believe the third day in a row right now. Are we moving to the point of control in china? Can we go that far yet?

LAURIE GARRETT, "NEWSDAY": We don't know. We don't even know what the 100 means. It's very hard to determine how good the reporting system is and how accurate these numbers are.

HEMMER: What more information is the Chinese government now giving to outside authorities, knowing in the early days of this outbreak, the World Health Organization, the CDC, went to China and were essentially stonewalled.

GARRETT: Well, now, we get tons of information, we just don't know thousand decipher it or what it actually means, and part of the problem is, there are real shortcomings in the Chinese system of what's called epidemiology analysis, the ability to get to the bottom and analyze an epidemic, analyze a disease trend. The other problem is reporting from the provincial level, we're not talking about a system here all connected by computers, with rapid input of information. We're talking about handwritten, painstaking, plodding studies, and we just don't know what's really going on.

HEMMER: Laurie, what are the Chinese people saying about this?

GARRETT: Well, you know, the government has a big credibility problem, because it acknowledged it had been covering up before, and there have been sort of cross messages of advice for people, so the average Chinese person that I've talked to feels very confused, they don't know who to trust, they don't know whether to believe things are better or worse, though here in Beijing, you definitely see the masks are coming off, People are back in the streets, traffic is back to being clogged and congested, and the offices are full again. So, there is a beginning of a faith in the capital at least that the government's got something in hand and, that the numbers, though they may not be absolutely accurate, do display a downward trend.

HEMMER: What do you think accounts for that in a country 1.2 billion, what changed to give them at least a growing sense of confidence?

GARRETT: Well, I can't say that the growing sense of confidence is true outside of Beijing. In fact, we're seeing quite the opposite with attacks on health care workers, riots here and there, small scale. And in some cases, hospital administrators have been physically assaulted by small bands of angry citizens. So, it's not clear that the kind of gain in confidence that is being felt in Beijing is reflected elsewhere in the country.

HEMMER: We are hearing from health organization officials who talk about these holes in data, the holes in the information provided by the Chinese government. Can you say whether or not, I know based on your previous answers, that all of the holes have not been filled in, but are more being filled in to this point?

GARRETT: You know, the problem is that the actual system of reporting cases is rather crude. I mean, I was stunned to find out they don't even have the hospital admissions codified in some way with a number system, so you can't actually tell if you are counting the same person twice, or missing somebody, or counting somebody three times. It's just not the kind of systemic approach that you'd like to see. So I'd say at this point, it's not so much that people are covering something up, it's that the system is just not adapting in a crisis way to the kind of need for scientific accuracy that the World Health Organization would like to see. And I would like to see.

HEMMER: Laura, were you ever concerned there working there and living?

GARRETT: No. I think the kinds of precautions one needed to take were pretty obvious, and I never really felt personally threatened, but I did have one brief moment when my translator suddenly was faint, and passing out and saying she felt nauseated, and I thought, oh my God, she's got SARS. But fortunately, it was something else.

HEMMER: Fortunately enough. That's right. Laurie Garrett from "Newsday," a correspondent working in Beijing. Thanks for talking, Laurie, and giving us the latest on the streets of Beijing. Much appreciated.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired May 12, 2003 - 09:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Seventy-five new SARS cases being reported today in China. That pushes the neighbor of infections there past 5,000. The World Health Organization concerned about another large-scale outbreak in China. Laurie Garrett of "Newsday" is the author of "The Coming Plague." She's live in Beijing with us today.
Laurie, thanks for your time here on AMERICAN MORNING.

I want to know what the take is right now. Fewer than 100 new cases of SARS reported, I believe the third day in a row right now. Are we moving to the point of control in china? Can we go that far yet?

LAURIE GARRETT, "NEWSDAY": We don't know. We don't even know what the 100 means. It's very hard to determine how good the reporting system is and how accurate these numbers are.

HEMMER: What more information is the Chinese government now giving to outside authorities, knowing in the early days of this outbreak, the World Health Organization, the CDC, went to China and were essentially stonewalled.

GARRETT: Well, now, we get tons of information, we just don't know thousand decipher it or what it actually means, and part of the problem is, there are real shortcomings in the Chinese system of what's called epidemiology analysis, the ability to get to the bottom and analyze an epidemic, analyze a disease trend. The other problem is reporting from the provincial level, we're not talking about a system here all connected by computers, with rapid input of information. We're talking about handwritten, painstaking, plodding studies, and we just don't know what's really going on.

HEMMER: Laurie, what are the Chinese people saying about this?

GARRETT: Well, you know, the government has a big credibility problem, because it acknowledged it had been covering up before, and there have been sort of cross messages of advice for people, so the average Chinese person that I've talked to feels very confused, they don't know who to trust, they don't know whether to believe things are better or worse, though here in Beijing, you definitely see the masks are coming off, People are back in the streets, traffic is back to being clogged and congested, and the offices are full again. So, there is a beginning of a faith in the capital at least that the government's got something in hand and, that the numbers, though they may not be absolutely accurate, do display a downward trend.

HEMMER: What do you think accounts for that in a country 1.2 billion, what changed to give them at least a growing sense of confidence?

GARRETT: Well, I can't say that the growing sense of confidence is true outside of Beijing. In fact, we're seeing quite the opposite with attacks on health care workers, riots here and there, small scale. And in some cases, hospital administrators have been physically assaulted by small bands of angry citizens. So, it's not clear that the kind of gain in confidence that is being felt in Beijing is reflected elsewhere in the country.

HEMMER: We are hearing from health organization officials who talk about these holes in data, the holes in the information provided by the Chinese government. Can you say whether or not, I know based on your previous answers, that all of the holes have not been filled in, but are more being filled in to this point?

GARRETT: You know, the problem is that the actual system of reporting cases is rather crude. I mean, I was stunned to find out they don't even have the hospital admissions codified in some way with a number system, so you can't actually tell if you are counting the same person twice, or missing somebody, or counting somebody three times. It's just not the kind of systemic approach that you'd like to see. So I'd say at this point, it's not so much that people are covering something up, it's that the system is just not adapting in a crisis way to the kind of need for scientific accuracy that the World Health Organization would like to see. And I would like to see.

HEMMER: Laura, were you ever concerned there working there and living?

GARRETT: No. I think the kinds of precautions one needed to take were pretty obvious, and I never really felt personally threatened, but I did have one brief moment when my translator suddenly was faint, and passing out and saying she felt nauseated, and I thought, oh my God, she's got SARS. But fortunately, it was something else.

HEMMER: Fortunately enough. That's right. Laurie Garrett from "Newsday," a correspondent working in Beijing. Thanks for talking, Laurie, and giving us the latest on the streets of Beijing. Much appreciated.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com