Man, 35, is new suspected SARS case
Another suspected case of SARS emerged in southern China today as international medical investigators scoured an apartment block to determine if it played any role in the infection of a man who lived there – the season’s only confirmed case of the virus so far.
Dr Thomas Tsang, a spokesman for the Hong Kong Department of Health, told reporters that his agency received word of the latest suspected case from officials in Guangdong province, which abuts Hong Kong. Tsang said the 35-year-old man has been isolated and hospitalised.
The source of the man’s possible infection of severe acute respiratory syndrome is still being investigated, Tsang said. No further information was immediately available, and a woman who answered the telephone at the Guangdong SARS Prevention Office said she had no new reports of suspected cases.
World Health Organisation officials – both in Beijing, the capital, and accompanying an investigative team in Guangdong – said they knew of the reports but had no immediate information on a new suspected case.
“Press reports keep bubbling up,” WHO spokesman Bob Dietz said in Beijing. “There’s always been a problem with case definition with SARS – actually identifying a case. So we want to understand clearly the basics that Guangdong is using.”
He added: “It’s not clear to us how they’re arriving at a decision to identify a suspected case.”
The other suspected case, a 20-year-old waitress, was announced last week. She has been isolated for treatment.
The only confirmed case, a 32-year-old television producer named Luo, left the hospital last week and was pronounced recovered. He told authorities he came into contact with no wild animals, and the source of his SARS remains a mystery.
On Sunday, his apartment block in Guangzhou was the site of a flurry of WHO activity as investigators swept through, interviewing managers and looking for possible modes of infection in water systems, garbage facilities and living quarters. They took swab samples from stairwells and terraces, among other sites.
“Our environmental experts scoured the building,” WHO spokesman Roy Wadia said in a telephone interview from Guangzhou, Guangdong’s capital. “Based on the observations they made, the complex seemed to be managed pretty well. The upkeep was good. The management was extremely cooperative.”
He said WHO was also working with the Guangdong Centre for Disease Control to examine all data collected so far.
At the same time, experts worked Sunday to process laboratory samples taken from the restaurant where the waitress worked. WHO called Friday for more information on the waitress, saying it could help determine how she was pronounced a suspected case.
Thousands of civets were slaughtered in Guangdong during the past week on suspicions they could have transmitted SARS to human beings. Although the virus has been found in the weasel-like mammals, there has been no definitive proof of their status as a human vector.
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