A New York City Health Department e-mail to heath-related professionals states that seven out of eight suspected SARS cases in New York City are proven negative.
This result will help ease the fear of New York City residents.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg will come to the Sweet &Turf Chinese restaurant in Chinatown to have lunch with leaders of the Chinese community and talk about SARS, to dispel rumors and show support for Chinatown.
The Health Department has not officially announced this seven-out-of-eight discovery. It has just released this information internally to medical organizations. Yesterday, Dr. Thomas Tsang, the new medical director of Charles B. Wang Community Health Clinic said that medical professionals already received this e-mail.
Since March 21, when the first suspected case of SARS was discovered in New York City, seven more suspected cases were discovered within three weeks and the rumors flew that the cases originated in Chinatown. Even though Chinatown tried to dispel the rumor, it was unable to avoid the damage to its economy.
Chinese businessmen hope that all kinds of industries in Chinatown will gather together to advertise and help to promote business at this time of alert.
Chinatown has not recovered from September 11th, and SARS fears are hitting the main businesses of Chinatown, like restaurants and tourism, the hardest. In addition, garment factories do not have enough workers and are receiving threats of order cancellations, so this problem is like rubbing salt in Chinatown’s wounds.
Lai Cheung-Kerg, CEO of the New York Garment Business Association said that if the shortage of garment workers is not resolved, they may not be able to meet deadlines for the April boom season. Moreover, he warned, garment distributors may not place orders with Chinatown factories anymore, boom season or not.
Mr. Lai also said that, at first, the garment business hoped that the restaurant business and other businesses at Chinatown would help, but now the restaurant and tourism businesses are having similar problems because of SARS scares. “We need to cooperate and support each other more. The recession of restaurant, garment and tourism business effect the jewelry and retail industries. All kinds of businesses in Chinatown go hand in hand.
Mr. Lee Wu invested in 11 restaurants around the United States and opened a lobster house last October on Chinatown’s Mott Street. Mr. Wu said that the media spread the rumor about discovering SARS at Paul's Restaurant like wildfire. Now that they’ve discovered it is false, they should report this information as aggressively, he added.
Mr. Lee who owns other restaurants within Chinatown, said that SARS scares caused a big loss to the economy of Chinatown. He is thinking of organizing a wide range of Chinese businesspeople to advertise or generate positive publicity.
The victim of the rumor, Paul's Restaurant owner of Ng Chi-wai, said that the falsehood should been corrected immediately. He hope that the government or the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association would lead the campaign.
