Thanks to the local people's high alertness towards severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the quick response of the local government and doctors, there are only two confirmed SARS cases in Xiamen of East China's Fujian Province so far, Zhang Zhenqing told China Daily in a phone interview.

Zhang is vice-director of Xiamen Zhongshan Hospital and is now in charge of the SARS treatment there.

Zhang said both of the SARS patients are in a good and stable condition and one, surnamed Ke, is going to be discharged from hospital this week.

The other one, surnamed Wang, will stay a few days longer because her heart rate is a little faster than normal, added Zhang.

Ke and her colleague Wang were both diagnosed with SARS on April 1, after they found themselves with fevers and coughs.

As employees of an aircraft engineering company in Xiamen, they came back to Xiamen from Hong Kong on March 31. They were sent by the company to Hong Kong for a training program and lived at Amoy Gardens, a residential estate where more than 300 residents have been infected with SARS.

The other 64 trainees, from different companies and different provinces but in the same program, all stayed at Amoy Gardens. Among them, 42 people took the same bus to return to Xiamen with Wang and Ke.

For Zhang and his colleagues, the discovery and treatment of the two SARS patients meant the battle against SARS in Xiamen just started - a battle to find all the other 64 people with a high risk of being SARS virus carriers.

To avoid the possible spread of SARS, a massive search for Wang and Ke's fellow trainees, around the city, the province and all other provinces where the trainees came from, began immediately.

A large team of health workers was organized to locate these potential SARS carriers, who, unaware of the danger, went about their business normally.

The survey and tracing work was much harder than the medical treatment.

There were no addresses and phone numbers available for the anti-epidemic searching groups. By contacting their companies, the searchers quickly found this information.

But some of them were incorrect and the task was made even harder by the fact that some people were travelling or staying at the homes of friends or relatives.

It took dozens of phones calls and a whole night of searching from door to door until Chen Ruijin, director of the quarantine station in Kaiyuan District in Xiamen, finally located a trainee.

The trainee had moved to a new address and changed to a new telephone number just a few days earlier.

As a result of the hard work of the team members, 20 trainees were located. Although none of them displayed SARS symptoms, they were sent to a local sanitarium, which had been converted into a SARS treatment station on April 2.

By April 7, a total of 36 trainees and three relatives had been found and sent to the sanitarium for monitoring and observation.

The other 28 trainees from other provinces have also been located and put under medical observation by local hospitals.

After two weeks of observation and tests, none of the 64 trainees, fortunately, was affected. And the 39 in the sanitarium have already returned to their work.

"It's a successful battle," Zhang Zhenqing said. "It helped avoid the possible spread of SARS in Xiamen.

"People in Xiamen are getting more and more aware of the disease, knowing how to protect themselves and how to protect the people around them.

"It's crucial to curb the spread of the SARS and get an ultimate victory in this battle," Zhang said.

(China Daily April 29, 2003)