The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Friday that it did
not view the latest SARS
outbreak in China as a major threat to public health since all
cases could be traced.
Despite the Chinese health ministry's confirmation that a woman
in Anhui
Province had died of SARS on April 19, WHO spokeswoman Maria
Cheng said: "We still don't view this as a major threat to public
health because all of the cases so far can still be traced
immunologically to the national Institute of Virology in
Beijing."
Cheng said although WHO had not been able to sequence or isolate
the virus to determine if it was the same strain as last year's,
but "We are reassured that we haven't seen this pop up in other
regions of the country which are not linked to these people."
So far, the people identified with SARS had very close personal
contact with the "index" cases, she said.
While China has updated the number of SARS cases to nine, Cheng
said WHO could not technically confirm these new cases because they
required external laboratory verification through its international
network.
As to a recent victim of SARS who was said to have contracted
the disease from working on SARS research at the National
Institution of Virology in Beijing, Cheng said, based on the
preliminary information received from WHO teams in Beijing, there
had been serious breaches in biosafety in these labs.
So far, five SARS cases and four suspected SARS cases have been
reported on the Chinese mainland since April 22. Of the five
confirmed cases, two were reported in Anhui and three in Beijing.
The four suspected cases are now in Beijing.
(Xinhua News Agency May 1, 2004)