German hotel quarantined, Japanese tourists checked in SARS alert

Dec 23, 04 | 3:37 am

(AFP) - German police placed a hotel in the south of the country under quarantine and doctors examined scores of Japanese tourists to see whether any had contracted the respiratory illness SARS.

Local health authorities said that the hotel in Korntal Muenchingen, where a group of Japanese tourists was staying, was temporarily sealed off while checks for the potentially deadly, pneumonia-like disease were made.

A bus carrying the rest of the group was taken to a parking lot, where military doctors from nearby Ulm carried out tests on some 50 tourists, the authorities said.

Nothing suspicious was reported in either operation and the police gave no details as to why they had suspected a possible outbreak of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

The health authorities said that one woman had complained of chills while a second woman had been having trouble with nose bleeds.

SARS killed almost 800 people, mostly in Hong Kong and China, in a worldwide outbreak that infected more than 8,000 by the end of last year.

- AFP -