China waitress, TV crew spark new SARS fears

Guangzhou - A waitress in southern China was declared a suspected SARS case Thursday, and in Hong Kong three members of a television crew were being tested for the deadly virus, raising fears of a new outbreak days ahead of Asia's biggest holiday.

China's Health Ministry said the 20-year-old waitress, believed to have been working in a seafood restaurant in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, was suspected of having Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome after having been in hospital for nearly two weeks.

"Forty-eight people who had close contact with her have been isolated and 52 others who had normal contacts have been observed," the provincial health department said.

None displayed SARS symptoms, which include a high fever and dry cough.

A 32-year-old television producer confirmed this week as China's first SARS case since last year has recovered. But the man, identified only as Luo, delayed his departure from a Guangzhou hospital Thursday because of a crush of reporters at the gates, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The three television workers from Hong Kong station TVB had visited an animal market and a hospital where Luo had been treated before they returned to Hong Kong on December 30. They were being held in hospital isolation wards.

"They have no pneumonia, just fever and upper respiratory tract infection. We are still waiting for results of tests," a spokesman for the Hong Kong Health Department said.

The new scare is emerging just ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, when an estimated 1.89 billion journeys are forecast to be made by rail, road, ship and air around China.

SARS killed about 800 people worldwide last year, nearly 350 of them in China.

LUNAR NEW YEAR SCARE

Luo's case has been linked to a coronavirus also found in wild civet cats, prized as a delicacy in southern China and sold in crowded markets. He denies eating civet and the source of his infection remains a mystery, complicating the larger question of whether the virus has begun to spread again.

"They are still searching. They still have no answers," Beijing-based World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Roy Wadia told Reuters.

Health officials this week banned the sale of civet cats and began a cull to prevent the spread of the disease, which has led to stepped up health screening at airports and border crossings in Asia.

Media reports said the waitress from the central province of Henan had been serving wild game, but provincial health officials declined to comment.

The woman first reported a fever on December 26 and was receiving treatment under quarantine at the Guangzhou No. 8 People's Hospital, one of three city hospitals designated to handle SARS patients.

Authorities have stepped up protective measures for medical staff, provincial health officials said. A WHO team was on its way to Guangzhou to investigate.

"We think that there is at this point no significant public health threat," said the WHO's Robert Breiman. "What our interest is in now is to determine what sort of steps can be taken to maintain that low public health risk."

China has given a Saturday deadline for the slaughter of about 10,000 civet cats and has launched a rat and cockroach extermination campaign.

With the return of the northern winter, health officials have been watching closely for a reemergence of SARS, which experts say is spread by droplets in coughs and sneezes.

Two previous cases, in Singapore and Taiwan, were linked to medical research accidents. -- Reuters

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