Diagnosis of Sars suspect pushed back to next week

Virus tests from a Chinese lab suggest a suspected Sars patient may have the deadly disease, but samples tested yesterday at labs in Hong Kong proved inconclusive, state media and health experts said.

"The wait continues in the diagnosis of the suspected Sars case in southern China," the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement late yesterday.

"It will be at least until early next week before the Ministry of Health of China and WHO can provide a clearer picture."

Initial results from viral gene sequencing on China's first suspected Sars case in months, a 32-year-old TV producer who came down with symptoms in December, showed a high correlation with the gene sequence of the Sars coronavirus, a provincial official told the Xinhua news agency said.

But the WHO said early readings from samples sent to two Hong Kong labs at the WHO's recommendation had yet to clear up the fuzzy picture left by other tests, a jumble of positive and negative results.

"They are very similar to ones obtained in Beijing all along, which is to say, very confusing," Beijing-based spokesman Roy Wadia told Reuters.

The WHO said it would wait for labs in Beijing and Hong Kong to carry out further antibody tests before making a final diagnosis on the man from the southern metropolis of Guangdong, who remains in good condition without fever in a local hospital. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome emerged in Guangdong in late 2002 and travellers spread it to nearly 30 countries. About 8,000 people were infected around the world and almost 800 of them died, some 350 in China.

The WHO acknowledged small fragments of a virus gene similar to the Sars pathogen appeared in a small number of samples.