Print This Page Email This Page See Most Sent

• EXCLUSIVE: Secret Exile Plan for Saddam? • Marines Get Warm Welcome in Iraqi Town • How Do You Feel About the War?

— By Carrie Lee

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Researchers across the world are shedding new light on the identity of a mysterious virus causing a killer pneumonia, moving closer to developing a diagnostic test and cure for the spreading disease.

Hong Kong officials said on Saturday one more patient had died, bringing the total death toll there to seven and the worldwide count to 11. But the officials said they had not yet established whether the old man had died of this illness.

Singapore health authorities, seeking to prevent further spread of the disease, said one hospital would handle all of the country's cases of the illness. No other patients would be admitted to that hospital.

The number of cases in Singapore rose to 44. The government said all of them had been linked to the first three.

Hong Kong officials have stressed that the spread of the disease is slow because most of the sick are health care workers and relatives with close contacts with the pneumonia patients.

Hong Kong Hospital Authority director Ko Wing-man told reporters the city had made progress in identifying the virus and news might break later on Saturday. He declined to elaborate, but said the disease could be caused by more than one viruses.

Hong Kong Cable Television said on Saturday a microbiology professor at the University of Hong Kong had identified the virus and the findings would develop cures and diagnostic tests.

The doctor was not available for immediate comment but sources told Reuters he would call a news briefing on Saturday.

Canadian researchers said on Friday that six Canadian victims of the infection, known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), showed evidence of the human metapneumovirus, part of a family of viruses called paramyxoviruses.

The World Heath Organization said its scientists also found in samples from patients a virus resembling a paramyxovirus. "This major step toward the development of a diagnostic test," WHO said in a statement.

Doctors in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Germany had earlier identified a virus taken from some SARS patients as a paramyxovirus, a large family of microbes that includes the germs that cause measles, mumps and respiratory infections.

RISING INFECTIONS

The WHO has issued its first global alert in a decade over the deadly disease, called severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The illness begins with a high fever, dry cough, chills, and severe breathing difficulties. A healthy and athletic adult can end up on a respirator within five days.

Some 350 people in 13 countries and territories had fallen sick, Omi said.

Ko said the number of infections in Hong Kong had climbed to 222, including 217 suffering full-blown pneumonia. Thirty-eight, including two children, were in serious condition.

More evidence has emerged to show that the disease probably started in the south of mainland China, where over 300 have been treated and at least five have died, creating world concern about a disease spread by air travelers.

Almost all confirmed infections are in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore and Canada and most of them are believed to be linked to one doctor from China's southern Guangdong province, who treated patients in China before dying from the disease.

Ko said on Saturday signs were emerging that even more local patients than previously known were linked to the doctor.

A day after the WHO said infections in Hong Kong may be linked to the earlier mainland outbreak, China's Health Minister, Zhang Wenkang, told reporters on Saturday that China was not necessarily the source of the local infections.

However, Ko revealed on Saturday a patient might have been infected by his colleague in the office.

In Vietnam, six more people were suspected of infection, bringing the total number of patients to 58. Five were in a critical condition. The United States suspended official U.S. government travel to Vietnam on Saturday because of the outbreak.

Shigeru Omi, regional director for the Western Pacific Region of the WHO, told reporters the WHO would call a meeting with world experts in Hong Kong within "days or weeks" to discuss how to control the disease.

Copyright 2003 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.