Many travelers wary of Asian respiratory illness

By Robbie Dingeman
Advertiser Health Writer

Worries over a mystery respiratory illness centered in Asia continue to prompt Hawai'i residents to cancel travel to South China, but reports of two suspected but unlikely cases of the illness on Kaua'i so far seem to have made little, if any, impact on travel to the Islands.

At Panda Travel, administrative manager Wesley Okamoto said his agency yesterday received a cancellation of a group of 45 people who had been preparing to leave for China next week.

The state Health Department on Wednesday indicated that the two suspected cases are a Kaua'i woman who came down with a fever and respiratory illness after returning from a trip to China, and a Wilcox Hospital staff member who came in contact with her.

Dr. Paul Effler, state epidemiologist, said that both women have recovered completely and that none of their family members became ill.

Okamoto said travel offices have seen increasing concern over the respiratory illness centered in Asia. By yesterday afternoon, the World Health Organization tallied the suspected cases worldwide at 306, with 10 deaths since Feb. 1.

As of yesterday afternoon, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tallied 13 suspected cases in 10 states: three in California, two in North Carolina, and one each in Hawai'i, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. The CDC list accounts for the Kaua'i traveler, but the hospital worker had not yet been added to the list.

Danny Casey, president of the Hawai'i chapter of the American Society of Travel Agents, said he has heard that people are calling off trips to Asia because of "the war jitters along with the unknowns of the virus issue."

But Casey said news of the war overtakes most other topics. "It's such a secondary issue to so many people right now, it's going to get missed by a lot of people," he said of the illness.

And he said the details of the suspected cases probably won't have much of an effect on domestic travel.

"In general, I don't think most travel agents and people really look at the CDC Web site when they're traveling within the U.S.," he said.

Okamoto said he thinks it's important for government officials to put out as much information as possible.

"We are dealing with nervous people already," Okamoto said. "It puts questions into people's minds about whether they should travel to these states or not."

Savio Pang, president of Regency Tours and Travel, said he thinks anxieties have eased as people find out more specific information about the disease being traced to a single floor of the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong.

Pang said most of the cancellations came right after the news broke over the weekend. "I don't think they are as worred as when it first started. When it first started, it was pretty scary."

The CDC continues to advise people to postpone nonessential travel to Hong Kong; Guangdong province in China; and Hanoi, Vietnam.