Three suspected SARS patients have the disease, the Chinese government confirmed today, raising to nine the number of people known to be infected in China’s latest outbreak.
The cases are limited to people who worked at Beijing’s Institute of Virology - where SARS samples are kept – and others who had close contact with them or patients infected by them. One person has died.
The latest confirmed cases are the father of a nurse who treated an infected lab worker, the nurse’s hospital roommate and a person who helped take care of the roommate, the Health Ministry said.
It said no new SARS cases have been reported in the last 24 hours.
No other people in China are suspected of having severe acute respiratory syndrome.
The World Health Organisation says that because China’s cases are in such a limited group, they are not a public health threat.
But the agency wants to find out what went wrong with lab safety, and a WHO team in Beijing has interviewed people at the SARS lab and the hospital where the patients were treated.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome triggered a global health crisis last year when it killed 774 people worldwide and infected more than 8,000.