Virus more deadly than first thought

By SCOTT MacLEOD and AGENCIES

The Sars virus is proving to be twice as lethal as originally thought.

World health officials are alarmed at the growing death rate, which comes amid a spate of false alarms in New Zealand, where there are yet to be any confirmed cases.

Figures on the World Health Organisation (WHO) website yesterday showed that more than one person in 20 with Sars has died from its pneumonia-like symptoms.

As of Monday, 217 of the 3861 people to have caught Sars had died - a rate of 5.62 per cent.

Figures published five weeks ago put the death rate at about 2 per cent.

The Director of Public Health at the Ministry of Health, Dr Colin Tukuitonga, said the Sars figures had been thrown into disarray by statistics coming from China.

The number of suspected cases rocketed during the past week when China chose to be more open in reporting cases.

Dr Tukuitonga said the higher death rate could be real, but equally could be just a fluctuation in the way the disease had been reported.

"There's a number of possible explanations, and we try not to get too excited by it," he said. "The first thing I would want to verify is that it is a real change."

But the scientific director of WHO's fight against Sars said he was alarmed by the new figures.

Dr Klaus Stoehr told the New York Times that the growing death rate was worrying.

The disease might have grown more powerful, it could now be killing people who were infected weeks ago, or the death rate might have jumped because Sars was spreading among older people, he said.

Sars started in China's Guangdong province and has spread to at least 25 other countries. The closest it has come to New Zealand is Australia, with three reported cases.

The number of cases in China yesterday reached 2158, with 97 dead.

The Government has urged people not to travel to the vast countryside. Premier Wen Jiabao admitted the health system was ill-prepared in rural areas, where 70 per cent of China's 1.3 billion people live.

WHO's China representative, Henk Bekedam, predicted a "big outbreak".

In Canada, the only non-Asian country where Sars has killed, authorities said a "belligerent" health worker who ignored pleas to quarantine himself put hundreds of people at risk when he attended a weekend funeral.

Dr Tukuitonga said a suspected case in Dunedin was a false alarm.

St John Ambulance staff yesterday took at least three sick people to hospital from Auckland Airport. None proved to have Sars.

Ambulance team leader Murray Bannister said St John was dealing with an average of at least two possible cases a day at the airport.

Ambulance staff had been told of possible cases among passengers even before their aircraft landed.

Sars update

* Reported cases: 3861.

* Deaths: 217.

* Death rate: 5.62 per cent.

* New Zealand cases: 0.