Olympic co-host city dismisses rumor of epidemic outbreak

QINGDAO, Shandong Province, July 17 (Xinhua) -- Olympic co-host city Qingdao on Thursday shrugged off a rumor of an ongoing epidemic outbreak in the coastal resort, saying it was groundless. An overseas website recently carried a story saying Qingdao, the sailing venue of the Beijing Olympics in eastern China's Shandong Province, was experiencing a mysterious epidemic which experts suspected as Epidemic Cerebrospinal Meningitis (ECM), but a local health official said the story was untrue. The ECM, an acute infectious disease caused by meningococcus, had obvious seasonal variation and usually peaked in Winter and Spring, from November to April, the official said. Its incidence usually began to decline in May and fell to the lowest level in the period from July to October, he said. "An outbreak in July as claimed in the report... [read full story]