India claims plague has reached peak

THE worst onslaught of the plague may have passed. For the first time since the epidemic began to sweep across India, two days have passed without a death and hospitals have begun discharging patients.

Health authorities expect the rise in suspected cases of pneumonic and bubonic plague to continue across the country for a few more days. But they claim that the epidemic has peaked. The Health Secretary, M S Dayal, said: 'The worst is over. We are on our way to recovery.'

Officials in Delhi have been saying this almost since the day that Indians began dying from the plague. But this time, epidemiologists report from laboratory tests that the rate of infection is falling. The jump in suspected cases has also tapered off.

Only 300 new cases were reported yesterday, compared to 1,200 cases reported during the previous 24 hours. 'Many are people with little coughs, little colds, who are confusing it with the plague,' said Dr N K Shah, the Indian representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The stopwatch used by epidemiologists to monitor how fast the plague travels has also produced encouraging news. Experts knew that on 21 September, about 700,000 people - among them an unknown number of disease carriers - began to flee the plague-stricken city of Surat. The refugees scattered over thousands of miles. Soon the plague began to appear in Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta and across 11 states.

What the authorities dreaded was an epidemic explosion across India brought on by the Surat run-aways. But to the authorities' relief, the plague's 10-day incubation period has passed for such suspected carriers, without a second wave of massive contagion.

'There is no doubt,' said a spokesman from the epidemic control room at the National Institute for Communicable Disease in Delhi, 'the epidemic has crested. The level of transmission is going down.'

In Delhi, where over 430 suspected cases of air-borne pneumonic plague were reported, only 31 have been confirmed positive. Schools, shut on Friday, are reopening today. Defending this move, Delhi's chief minister, Madan Lal Khurana, said, 'We had to remove the panic. The danger is over.'

News that the plague was waning came too late for a family of poor labourers in Thane, near Bombay. Panic was so widespread in their shantytown that a man murdered a husband, wife and their seven-year-old daughter because they had arrived from Surat and were therefore suspected of carrying the plague. The killer dumped the corpses down a well, where hundreds of slum- dwellers drink the water.

LONDON - A special task force of experts in communicable diseases, set up because of fears that the plague could spread to Britain, is to meet for the first time today, writes Ian MacKinnon. They are likely to examine procedures at British ports and airports as more suspected cases of bubonic and pneumonic plague were recorded yesterday, bringing the total to 18, of whom 11 have been given the all clear.

(Photograph omitted)