China confirms Sars case

China confirmed yesterday its first Sars case since a world epidemic was declared over in July, and began a mass slaughter of civet cats on fears a new strain of the deadly virus may have jumped from wild animals to humans.

Health officials in the southern province of Guangdong said a virus gene sample from the Sars patient - a 32-year-old television producer - resembled that of a coronavirus found in civet cats, a Chinese culinary delicacy.

To eliminate a possible fresh source of the disease, the province where Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome originated in November 2002 planned to close wild animal markets.

"And we will kill all the civet cats in Guangdong markets, which number about 10,000," Guangdong health bureau official Feng Liuxiang told a news conference.

Guangdong also launched a "patriotic health campaign" to exterminate rats and cockroaches ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, which starts on January 22, when tens of millions of Chinese travel the country.

Adding to fears around Asia of a new outbreak, the Philippines announced that a maid who had been working in Hong Kong was a suspected Sars case.

She was being held in isolation with her husband and a doctor who initially treated her. Tests results would be available within two days, the health department said.

Two other cases have been reported in Taiwan and Singapore, but both were scientists who had apparently been infected in laboratories. The Sars epidemic killed about 800 people around the world, including 349 in China. It brought Asian tourism and air industries almost to a halt and devastated the economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed the case and praised Guangdong for how it handled the case. It said the lone case did not constitute a public health threat and would not be grounds for a travel warning for China.

"We do believe that the system in Guangdong was working," WHO representative in China Henk Bekedam told a news conference. "We have, really, thumbs up for what's happened so far."

The Chinese health ministry said in a statement the confirmation of the Sars case followed repeated tests by the Guangdong Centre for Disease Control and the China Centre for Disease Control and was in line with tests of two laboratories of the World Health Organisation.

Seventeen of 81 people known to have had contact with the patient were still being isolated, it added.

The patient told doctors last month he had not left Guangzhou or eaten wild animal meat for a month before hospitalisation, and the cause of his infection remained elusive.

Financial analysts warned the news would hit airline and tourism stocks on Tuesday, while providing a lift to drug counters.

"I'm not at all surprised," a Western diplomat said in reaction to the confirmation. "I don't think there will be much impact, as the government has pretty good preventative measures in place following the last outbreak."