China checks labs amid Sars scare

BEIJING - China is conducting emergency safety checks at Sars laboratories nationwide after a leak in Beijing spawned a web of infection that led to the first reported death from the virus since a major outbreak last year.

Desperate to break the chain and avoid a wider epidemic, the government has publicised details of trains and buses used by a student who travelled after contracting Sars while working in a national laboratory and by her mother, who died after caring for her.

Fearing contagion, China has stepped up surveillance of passengers for Sars before a week-long holiday starting on May 1, when millions of people are expected to travel by air or rail.

Scientists had sealed off laboratories at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing, where the 26-year-old student is believed to have caught the deadly disease while engaged in research involving live samples of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus.

Five other teams of experts had fanned out to provincial laboratories, the Beijing News said.

Technical experts from the World Health Organisation would arrive in China's capital, Beijing, this week to assist in the probe trying to identify those who might have been exposed and in assuring proper control practices are in place, the WHO said.

"It appears that there were lapses in bio-safety guidelines," said Beijing-based WHO spokesman Bob Dietz. "That is what they'll be investigating."

Another vexing question was why it took nearly a month to determine the student had Sars, by which time her mother had died and she had made five train trips between Beijing and her home in the eastern province of Anhui.

"We are concerned that it is taking a long time for the alarm bells to go off. We know the government is too," Julie Hall, the WHO's Sars team leader in China, told Reuters.

"But once those alarm bells were raised, we're seeing a very strong and vigorous response from the government," she said.

All the cases diagnosed in the most recent outbreak -- two confirmed and six suspected -- were ultimately traceable to the laboratory.

For that reason and because of the effectiveness of China's surveillance system, the risk of the contagion spreading widely was low, the WHO Western Pacific regional director, Shigeru Omi, told reporters in Manila.

"We don't see it yet as a serious public health concern but we have to remain vigilant," he said.

Sars spread alarm across the world last year, killing nearly 800 people. It had a serious economic impact throughout Asia as tourism and investment were both hard hit.

More than 180 staff of the Beijing institute, part of the national centre for disease control, had been moved to a resort north of the city and placed under medical observation, the Beijing News said.

The institute and other disease control offices had taken up temporary quarters in another part of the capital after their laboratories were sealed, it said.

The student, surnamed Song, spent two weeks in the laboratory in March.

The second confirmed victim, a 20-year-old nurse surnamed Li, took care of Song in a Beijing hospital earlier this month. Both Li and Song had gone days without fever, Xinhua news agency said.

A post-doctorate student in the lab also suspected of having Sars was in stable condition, it said. But the condition of Li's mother, also suspected of having Sars, had deteriorated.

- REUTERS