Guyana visas to be denied Chinese from SARS-hit areas
Stabroek News
May 12, 2003
Chinese from parts of China heavily affected by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) will be denied visas to enter Guyana until the situation is brought under control.
Sources tell Stabroek News that instructions to this effect have been passed to the Guyana mission in Beijing in the wake of the ongoing SARS crisis there and the arrival here of Chinese from one of the most affected areas - Guangdong province.
Meanwhile, three of the four Chinese nationals, who were isolated at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation by the Ministry of Health as a precaution against SARS disease, were sent home yesterday, according to hospital sources.
Sources told Stabroek News that four, not five, Chinese nationals were isolated at the hospital because they had recently visited China, the country with the highest death toll and infection from the viral disease that has claimed hundreds of lives worldwide.
The four were isolated out of an abundance of caution by the ministry in its effort to prevent the disease from entering the country.
Three of them, a mother and her daughter and son, live in Guyana and had returned from a two-month holiday spent in Guangdong Province.
The three had arrived in Guyana on Wednesday evening and even though they were not ill the ministry took the decision to quarantine them in the area isolated by the hospital for the disease.
The third person, who will remain in isolation for the next few days, is a Chinese businessman who travelled from China.
According to sources, Guyanese who travel to affected areas like Guangdong would likely be quarantined on their return here. (Samantha Alleyne)
