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China Seals Off SARS Research Lab

Posted on: Friday, 23 April 2004, 06:00 CDT

BEIJING - China said Saturday it has sealed off a SARS research lab in its capital after two lab workers contracted the disease and the mother of one died - the world's first such death this year.

A nurse who looked after one of the SARS-infected lab workers is suspected to have caught SARS and is also in isolation, officials said.

A virus control institute, part of China's Centers for Disease Control was ordered sealed off, which means people cannot go in or out, state media reported.

"Yes, it has been sealed off," said a woman at China's SARS hotline who refused to give her name. Calls to the disease control center rang unanswered.

Last year's SARS outbreak triggered a global health crisis, killing 774 people around the world and injecting more than 8,000. China reported 349 deaths, the last one in July - before the latest cases.

SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, first emerged in southern China in November 2002.

China on Saturday was screening thousands of travelers for fevers at airports and train stations in a massive effort to block a new outbreak of SARS. Hundreds of people with possible exposure to the SARS virus were being held under medical observation.

The government on Friday confirmed that two laboratory employees had the disease and listed a nurse as a suspected case.

The lab workers were identified as a 31-year-old man from Beijing and a 26-year-old woman from central Anhui province - both employees of China's Centers for Disease Control in Beijing. The 20-year-old nurse works in a Beijing hospital.

The fatality was the mother of the woman from Anhui, and was believed to have caught the virus from her daughter, the government said. The daughter was treated last month at a Beijing hospital, where she came into contact with the nurse.

"When the daughter was ill, the mother accompanied her all the time," the Health Ministry said on its Web site.

The mother, hospitalized April 8 with a fever and unidentified virus, died Monday and was cremated, the ministry said. A fever is one of the key symptoms of SARS, along with coughing and shortness of breath.

The ministry said the mother had a heart problem, although it wasn't clear whether that was related to her death.

The women took several train journeys together between Beijing and Anhui and might have exposed many other people to the virus, said Maria Cheng, a World Health Organization spokeswoman in Geneva.

Hospitals along the rail line have been put on alert to report any cases of pneumonia, she said.

"Here it looks like we had human-to-human transmission and there's clearly a travel history where they might have exposed other people," Cheng said.

The WHO is considering sending a team of experts to China to help officials there to trace the women's movements over the past few weeks, she said.

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