"Over 99 percent of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) patients in Guangzhou suffer from sudden high fever, but the condition is different in Beijing," Professor Wang Chen, a member of the Beijing SARS Prevention and Cure Expert Group and president of the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, told a seminar yesterday.

"In Beijing, some SARS patients do not have a high fever or lung shadow," Wang said.

But Hong Tao, chief scientist of the virus institute under the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told China Daily the SARS virus in Beijing is the same as that in Guangdong judging from genetic tests.

"I suppose the different climate in the two regions is a factor explaining the different symptoms," said Hong, who is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Hong also illustrated that many patients in Guangdong have diarrhoea, but Beijing patients do not experience this.

Furthermore, the fatality rate for SARS patients in Beijing is nearly 6 percent, some 2.5 percentage points higher than the figure for Guangzhou.

Wang also predicted the SARS fatality rate of Beijing will definitely climb in the future.

"The reason is that the amount of new SARS cases in Beijing is declining, while the figure for new deaths will not change much," Wang explained.

The professor added that the predicted higher fatality ratio is a technical factor but did not mean the condition in Beijing is worse.

At yesterday's seminar organized by the Beijing Municipal People's Political Consultative Conference, the capital's top political advisers urged the government to increase the input towards the public health, especially epidemic prevention.

"We have paid costs in the fight against SARS due to a lack of epidemic prevention investment and qualified personnel," said Zhang Xiaolin, standing committee member of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, one of the major non-Communist parties in China.

According to sources, China's expenditure on public health was 476.4 billion yuan (US$57.5 billion) in 2000, less than 6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) that year.

It is reported that government health spending has declined year-on-year since 1980. "Some local authorities paid more attention to building bigger and more comprehensive hospitals, rather than upgrading disease prevention network," Zhang said.

China's three-level disease prevention network, established after 1949, has been threatened since 1978 because "they could not earn money like hospitals do."

(China Daily May 21, 2003)