SARS adds to travel industry's woes

Terrorism, the war on Iraq, orange alerts, and now a deadly infectious disease. "What's next? Locusts?" one flight attendant asks.

[Photo: AP]

A thermal camera is used to check the temperatures of passengers from China at Incheon International Airport near Seoul last week. South Korea confirmed its first probable case of SARS on Tuesday.

Fred and Sherry Wagg looked forward to attending their nephew's wedding in Toronto. They were ready for their Air Canada flight. They packed everything they would need.

Camera. Check.

Party clothes. Check.

Face mask. Huh?

Flying the friendly skies is no longer friendly. A newly emerged respiratory illness called SARS has raced through China, then in March and April hopped flights to more than two dozen countries, carried on board by unwitting passengers.

The day before the Waggs' April 24 flight, the World Health Organization issued a travel advisory recommending people avoid nonessential travel to Toronto. The city of 14-million was the sole North American hotspot for SARS and the latest addition to a no-travel list including Beijing, Hong Kong and Hanoi.

The Waggs, who live in Largo, canceled their flight.

"We would have liked to go and see everyone. It was a difficult decision," said Sherry Wagg. "But we were afraid of being quarantined. I was worried about being in the airport and in contact with health care workers" stationed there to screen passengers for high temperatures and sniffles.

Last week the World Health Organization lifted its travel advisories for Toronto and Vietnam. China was the only country reporting increasing numbers of SARS cases. Worldwide, more than 5,400? people in 25 countries were infected. At least 375 have died. There have been about 50 probable cases in the United States, but no fatalities. The threatened epidemic has sickened a travel industry already ravaged by fears of terrorist attacks, war in Iraq and orange alerts for unnamed subway and cruise ship plotters.

In Toronto, restaurants and shopping malls reported business down 70 percent after the SARS travel warning was issued April 23.

In San Jose, Calif., an American Airlines jet and its passengers were temporarily quarantined.

In Shanghai, fines for spitting in public were doubled and janitors began scrubbing subway stations and bus stops every two hours.

In Miami, two cruise lines banned passengers who appeared sick and recently had visited Toronto, China, Singapore, Hong Kong or Vietnam. Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean Cruises said anyone with a temperature of 100 degrees who had traveled to SARS-infected areas in the last two weeks would be forbidden to board.

Why would anyone leave home?

"What's next? Locusts?" asked one weary flight attendant in a call to the union in Washington, D.C.

As airline pilots began packing guns to defend against terrorist assaults on the cockpit, the Association of Flight Attendants could only demand adequate supplies of antibacterial soap, masks and gloves to protect against SARS for employees in the cabin.

"The CDC is telling people to defer nonessential travel to some locations, and flight attendants don't have that luxury," said Dawn Deeks, spokeswoman for the union, which represents 50,000 flight attendants at 26 airlines. The union's concerns were justified: A Singapore Airlines attendant was diagnosed with SARS after working a March 14 flight between New York and Frankfurt carrying an infected doctor and his family. On a March 15 Air China flight, 15 passengers may have contracted SARS on the plane, the union reported.

While experts believe the disease is transmitted through droplets from sneezing and coughing, the virus has been shown to survive as long as 24 hours on surfaces. If a passenger had once complained about grime on his flip tray, he now needed to wonder what lurked there unseen.

Last fall, major travel companies began preparing for a drop in business as war in Iraq loomed, but none could anticipate SARS. Rosenbluth International, a giant corporate travel management company based in Philadelphia, projected a 10 to 15 percent decline in activity during the war. Business dipped 9 percent.

"That's the good news,' spokeswoman Alicia Klosowski said.

"The bad news has been the uncertainty about SARS."

The company began tracking its bookings when the first SARS travel advisory was issued March 15. In two weeks, the number of Europeans traveling to Asia declined by 7 percent. By mid April, business was off 37 percent, Klosowski said. Trips to Canada were down 15 percent.

Rosenbluth clients were equipped with "global security sweep" software. Created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the program allows businesses to track employees by logging onto a Web site where each traveler's location is pinpointed on a map of the world. A supervisor can "drill down" on their location for hotel, flight and cellular phone information, says Klosowski, so "they can quickly get them back" in an emergency.

Both business and leisure travelers might well wonder what's next.

But while there is little one can do about the infinitesimal chance that a fellow passenger is packing explosives in his shoes, avoiding exposure to a potentially deadly disease is a risk one can avoid. Postpone the trip, some suggest. And if you go, be aware of conditions at your destination and en route.

Dr. John Sinnott, an expert in infectious diseases and a world traveler, says he is always cautious on airplanes. "If I'm seated next to someone on a plane who is sniffling, coughing, sneezing," Sinnott said, "I move."

Director of infectious diseases at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, Sinnott is scheduled to go to Europe this summer. "I'll wear a mask, hydrate myself and hope for the best," he said.

He suggests that while SARS cases are being reported, travelers pick safer destinations, perhaps a cruise ship in the Bahamas or Caribbean. (Of course, gastrointestinal outbreaks on cruise ships departing from the United States tripled last year. In December, nearly 270 passengers fell ill from a Norwalklike virus on the Oceana, which departed from Fort Lauderdale.)

"As much as I love Asia, I wouldn't go right now."

Airlines and cruise lines, in a rare exception to their rules, are permitting travelers to rebook trips canceled due to the SARS scare without penalty, easing decisionmaking for travelers.

Still, odds that another emerging disease could again ground travelers are good. In the 14th century, the plague spread to thousands when the major mode of travel was walking. Today 1.6-billion people are airborne, 530-million of them crossing international borders within hours. Investigators believe SARS spread when a virus in animals jumped to humans in a rural province in China last November.

"The developed world has somehow felt immune to these things. It was only with 9/11 that we realized our vulnerability," says Dr. Kenneth Bock, who with his brother Dr. Steven Bock wrote The Germ Survival Guide, a book on strengthening the body's immune system due out in June.

Invited to give a series of lectures in China in September, Kenneth Bock declined.

"I thought that was a healthy choice for me and my family. You do the best you can with the information you have in front of you."

He says travelers should be realistic. And smart.

"Don't be in a state of fear, because fear and stress depress your immune system," he advises.

"Part of being well in the world is accepting life as it is. Nothing is perfect."

SARS is just one of a number of new and deadly infections that has emerged in the past 30 years, including ebola and HIV, the New York Times reports. But the common flu kills more than 20,000 people each year in the United States.

The Waggs were worried that if they flew to Toronto for the wedding they might stay healthy but still be caught in a quarantine should someone at their hotel or the family reunion become ill. They now have plans to fly to Canada in the fall. Officials there are readying a $17-million marketing campaign to reassure the world that Canada is an enjoyable and safe tourist destination.

In a recent column, Ellen Goodman asks how we will face the global village: openly or behind a mask.

For the informed traveler, the village he cares to visit may, for a time, be considerably smaller.