NEW YORK — City health authorities on Saturday alerted hospitals to watch for symptoms of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness believed to have afflicted a doctor from Singapore who visited New York.
The man was taken off a flight from New York to Singapore on Saturday during a stopover in Germany, and is quarantined at a Frankfurt hospital. His two travel companions also were hospitalized.
“He is a physician who cared for two patients with this illness in Singapore,” said Sandra Mullin, spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Health.
During a teleconference Saturday, top U.S. health officials said more than 150 cases have been reported worldwide of the so-called severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. At least three people have died — an American businessman and two people who arrived in Canada recently from Hong Kong.
The doctor who passed through New York was the first suspected case in Europe.
No cases have so far been identified in the United States.
In addition to the doctor from Singapore, a man traveling from Atlanta, Ga., to Canada is “reported to have developed some respiratory symptoms,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The two major symptoms of this pneumonia are high fever accompanied by difficulty in breathing. The potentially fatal illness is believed to spread “person to person,” said Gerberding, with an incubation period of between two and seven days.
On Saturday, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, warned that the illness is becoming “a worldwide health threat.”
In New York, “we’re sending out a broadcast alert to all hospitals to be on the lookout for any illness that could be suggestive of this illness,” Mullin said. New York City has more than 70 hospitals.
She said New York health authorities, working with the CDC and the WHO, were in the process of investigating the details of the case involving the Singapore doctor.
He began to suffer symptoms while in New York, said Dr. Angela Wirtz, a health official in the German state of Hessen where he’s being treated.
The doctor arrived in New York last Wednesday and spent only several hours attending a conference before leaving two days later, having had “minimal contact with others,” the city Health Department said in a statement.
Department officials interviewed the man by phone from his hospital bed in Frankfurt, where he was in stable condition. His name was not immediately released. Two people traveling with him — his wife and another doctor — also were being held for observation.
In any case, “those who had casual contact with someone with this illness are likely not at risk,” Mullin said.
The WHO on Saturday issued emergency guidance for travelers, urging anyone who may have come in contact with someone infected to watch for symptoms such as high fever, coughing and shortness of breath. SARS also may be associated with headache, muscular stiffness, loss of appetite, confusion, rash and diarrhea.
A cluster of cases has been reported in Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
While no formal travel restrictions are in place, U.S. health officials said travelers may wish to postpone trips to the countries at risk if the visit is not essential, Gerberding said. And health officials are preparing to issue an alert for passengers returning from countries where SARS has been reported.
In Atlanta, the CDC emergency operations center has been activated, and its staff is working round the clock responding to the outbreak. U.S. health officials are in close touch with health officials in China, where cases have been reported at least several weeks back, said Tommy Thompson, U.S. secretary of health and human services.
The CDC is also working with foreign laboratories to analyze samples from patients.
“We are doing everything humanly possible to learn what is causing this outbreak.” said Thompson, speaking to the teleconference from O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, before flying to Washington.
