Singapore laboratories investigated in mystery Sars case

Investigations into a mysterious single Sars case in Singapore narrowed yesterday to two laboratories where a scientist worked before catching the disease. Research on Sars was done at one of them. China, widely accused of covering up this year's initial outbreak of the flu-like disease, said it was pulling out all the stops to prevent a resurgence.

Beijing airport was keeping aircraft from Singapore away from the main terminal and passengers from the city state would undergo separate health checks, state media said. Shanghai adopted similar measures.

Taipei and Hong Kong, both hit hard by the last outbreak, also tightened health checks on people arriving from Singapore after the 27-year-old Singaporean scientist tested positive for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome on Tuesday.

The World Health Organisation, which had declared the global outbreak over in July, and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta will each send two bio-safety experts to Singapore to examine the laboratories next week.

"All the labs are looking at safety measures, especially after this incident," Singapore's junior health minister, Balaji Sadasivan, told reporters on the sidelines of a WHO regional conference in Manila.

The scientist had worked at a laboratory at the National University of Singapore, studying the West Nile virus. But on August 23, three days before falling sick, he visited an Environmental Health Institute lab where Sars is studied.

The WHO has said Singapore's case did not fit its profile of Sars and was "not an international public health concern". It says it is safe to travel to Singapore. The health ministry said yesterday the man was "doing well and has no fever".