The Government of India is likely to sound the red alert for checking the spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which has already claimed 250 lives, infected about 4,500 people and spread in 25 nations all over the world. Over 100 people are reported to have already died in China and 106 in Hong Kong; the Chinese government has ordered closure of all schools in the country in order to forestall more trouble from the SARS virus. Fearing widespread incidence of SARS, Maharashtra is already seeking international help for combating the epidemic. The Union Health Minister, Sushma Swaraj, called an emergency meeting of health ministers and chief secretaries of all the States in India for evolving a strategy for dealing with the scourge.

In New Delhi on April 22, a 29-year-old woman who arrived from China’s Guandong Province, from where the epidemic is believed to have originated from pigs though final identification about its causes still remains to be established, passed the immigration check-post at the Indira Gandhi airport without raising any suspicion. But when she complained of some respiratory problem, she was immediately rushed to the Infectious Diseases Hospital. Whether she was another case of SARS would be known only when reports of her sputum and urine are available.

Already, two other cases – a man each in Jaipur and Nasik, both returning from the U. S. A.—are in hospital with SARS-like symptoms. But India’s Director General of Health Services, Dr. S. P. Aggarwal, said they seemed unlikely to be SARS victims. At least 50 people, including two dozen guests who had attended the wedding of a SARS virus-infected patient, Julie D’ Silva, on April 22, were quarantined at Pune in Maharashtra. Three confirmed SARS cases were shifted from a private hospital to the isolation ward of the Dr. Naidu Infectious Diseases Hospital in the evening.

When it was officially made known that Stanley D’Silva, his mother Vimala and sister Julie, had tested positive for the SARS virus and that Julie had defied the doctors’ advice and married Shailesh Survavamshi at the Oldham Methodist Church, the State Government decided to quarantine all the family members and relatives of D’Silva and the bridegroom. Following reports that SARS victims had been identified in several States all over the country, there was an uproar in India’s Parliament. The Union Health Minister, Sushma Swaraj, could calm down agitated MPs only by saying that the government was fully prepared to meet the challenge of this blight and even Union Defence Minister George Fernandes, who is on a week-long visit in China, would be subjected to proper examination as soon as he returns by the medical team now deployed at Indira Gandhi airport.

The Maharashtra Government has sent an SOS to the Centre , requesting the latter to seek the help of authorities in China, Hongkong and Singapore in stopping the flying of India-bound passengers showing even preliminary symptoms of SARS. The Central Government is already in touch with the WHO about measures which should be taken to prevent the SARS outbreak from spreading. The Indian Medical Association has already issued a warning that deadly flu-like SARS could spread like wildfire among the country's more than 1 billion people. The IMA says that the health countries are "not taking adequate steps to spread awareness about SARS which has already claimed 235 lives and sickened more than 4,000 people worldwide.