WHO expects more Sars scares due to common symptoms

Many more suspected Sars cases are likely to emerge because the symptoms match those of common winter diseases, the World Health Organisation said yesterday as it investigated the latest case to surface in China.

A 20-year-old waitress in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, is suspected of having deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Her case surfaced days after China confirmed its first Sars infection since last year.

But all three Hong Kong television station workers who came down with fever after returning from southern China, have tested negative for Sars, a government spokesman said yesterday.

Health authorities have been worrying for months about the reappearance of Sars this winter. The disease has the same symptoms, including a relentless fever and dry cough, as several other respiratory diseases.

"Some of these diseases may also give rise to atypical pneumonia. It is likely that numerous other suspected (Sars) cases will be reported over the coming weeks," the WHO said on its Web site.

The WHO has sent a team of four doctors to Guangzhou to investigate the disease, particularly its transmission. A spokesman said their investigation would be sweeping, with all possibilities considered.

Sars first appeared in southern China in late 2002 and killed about 800 people worldwide last year, nearly 350 of them in China.

A Guangzhou health expert said he did not believe Sars would re-emerge on the scale of last year.

"I do not think the confirmed case means that Sars will return on a large scale," Zhong Nanshan, head of the Guangzhou Respiratory Illness Research Institute, was quoted in the media as saying.

"To say it will trigger the huge spread of SARS is absurd." In remarks broadcast by Hong Kong Cable Television, Zhong said the the suspected patient's illness could be related to civet cats.

"I think it is very much related to civet cats," Zhong told reporters, adding the restaurant she worked for sold civet cats.

Guangdong and Hong Kong scientists had earlier identified the animal as a main carrier of the Sars virus.

But a WHO expert who was investigating Sars in Guangzhou said other animals might be involved and environmental transmission was also possible.

The China Daily newspaper said in an editorial the country had learned its lesson from last year, when it first covered up the extent of the disease. "Transparency breeds confidence," it said.

The suspected case of the waitress follows confirmation of Sars in a 32-year-old Guangzhou TV producer, the country's first case since the world outbreak was declared over in July. He has since recovered and left hospital on Thursday.

His case has been linked to a coronavirus very similar to one found in civet cats, a weasel-like animal prized as a delicacy in southern China and sold in crowded markets.

With the re-emergence of Sars, the government banned sale of the animals and has been carrying out a mass cull.

The TV producer said he had not eaten civet. The source of his infection remains a mystery, complicating the larger question whether the virus had begun to spread again.

The seafood restaurant where the waitress is believed to have worked was also famous for its civet cat, a neighbour said.

The three-person Hong Kong television crew had visited an animal market and the hospital where the producer had been treated before returning home on December 30.

Two tested negative for Sars on Thursday. "All three have tested negative for Sars," a Hospital Authority spokesman said. But they remain under observation in hospital isolation wards.

"Anyone with pneumonia will now be tested for Sars regardless of travel history," said a Hong Kong government spokeswoman yesterday. Previously, Sars tests were conducted only on pneumonia patients who had travelled recently to mainland China.

The Sars scare is emerging just before the Lunar New Year holidays, when an estimated 1.89 billion journeys are expected to be made by rail, road, ship and air around China and in the region.