After months of playing down the numbers, hiding the truth and possible origin of the killer virus, China is now taking steps to help contain the plague that is spreading around the world at a rapid pace.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged publicly last week that SARS was not only a matter of "public health, but also of economic stability" ending months of mismanagement and lies.
This week Chinese citizens applauded the dismissals of Beijing's mayor and minister of health for failing to report the severity of the atypical pneumonia that has spread globally.
But many had a cynical view of the sackings of the two officials, saying Chinese government transparency had always been low and secrecy was built into the political system.
The two who got the boot were just scapegoats.
As for the rest of the world we can only be thankful that the sound of money going down the drain has prompted the mandarins in Beijing to finally do something.
Right from the start the Chinese government had tried to hide the impact of the killer virus. It has now been determined that Patient One for SARS lives in the community of Foshan near the Pearl River in Southeast China. He became sick Nov. 16, 2002.
A high fever struck the 40-year-old businessman. Several days later, a dry rapid cough followed.
He infected four nurses at the local hospital, then recovered.
By a quirk of the disease, which often leaves the young untouched, his four children did not get ill. The disease likely jumped to humans from animals.
It's a half-hour drive to Guangzhou, a modern metropolis of 6.6 million known as the "City of Flowers."
A shrimp salesman infected in Foshan likely carried the disease the short distance.
Others spread the respiratory infection to other parts of Guangdong province. Between Nov. 16, 2002 and Feb. 10, 2003, at least 305 people became sick from SARS in Guangdong. Five people died.
The communist government in China kept this a secret for three months.
As the virus spread rapidly around the world China was playing down the cases in the face of feeble warnings from the World Health Organisation.
As SARS began to cripple Hong Kong, Singapore and Toronto, China was still secretive.
As late as last week a team of World Health Organization (WHO) officials who visited Beijing's China-Japan Friendship Hospital to investigate SARS raging in the country were taken for a ride.
So, it turns out, were the patients.
Reports show that before the WHO team arrived at the hospital, 31 coughing, shivering staff members who had caught SARS from patients were hastily loaded into ambulances and driven around until the investigators left.
Time magazine is reporting this week that a secret staff meeting overheard by its reporter, Dr. Zhang Hanwei, director of the Shanxi Provincial People's Hospital in Taiyuan, relayed what he called the "three no's" disseminated by China's Ministry of Central Publicity: no talking to the media about SARS, no talking to the public about treating the disease and no tattling to WHO if its experts come calling.
China claims the virus that causes SARS has infected 1,530 of its citizens and killed 67, but WHO officials suspect the numbers are higher.
That prediction came true after the so-called sacking of the Beijing mayor and minister of healthy. China's SARS numbers rose dramatically.
China's secrecy combined with missed opportunities and mistakes around the world has led to the SARS virus killing over 170 people, 13 in Toronto alone.
Well over 3,400 are suspected or probably infected by the virus. Many thousands had to be placed in quarantine.
The disease is growing, not shrinking because of China's secrecy.
The shroud of secrecy placed on the outbreak of SARS by China has some speculating that the virus was a biological weapon made in a lab.
If that holds true, there should be an antidote.
But don't expect China to come clean about that anytime soon.
