A suspected SARS sufferer in China had been in contact with civets, state media said yesterday, as reports suggested some of the animals were being clubbed to death, raising the risk of spreading the deadly virus.
Investigations of the suspected case in a 20-year-old waitress had indicated a link with civets, already a prime suspect in the hunt for the virus' source, the China Daily reported.
The officially sanctioned paper cited "insiders" as saying the woman, under quarantine at the No. 8 People's Hospital in southern China's Guangzhou city, had been in contact with the weasel-like animals.
The Yangcheng Evening News reported the woman worked in a restaurant famed for its tasty civet dishes.
It was unclear if the reports, repeated in several papers, were based on water-tight scientific proof or were meant to legitimize local authorities' decision to controversially slaughter thousands of the creatures to halt the disease.
The civet link is on the agenda of a team of World Health Organization (WHO) experts in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, on a mission to look into the cause of SARS.
At the same time, the WHO cited anecdotal evidence that civets were now being clubbed to death, and warned such methods of slaughter could exacerbate the spread of SARS.
"We've heard anecdotal evidence that some of the animals have been clubbed," said Bob Dietz, a Beijing-based WHO spokesman. "This puts all the people [involved in killing the civets] at risk."
The mass destruction of civets -- considered a delicacy in Guangdong -- began after confirmation this week of the country's first case of SARS in half a year.
Thousands of them have already been killed, mostly by drowning and cremation.
The announcement of the SARS case -- since discharged from hospital -- sent ripples through the region and the world, as it sparked fears that the virus was about to resurface on a massive scale.
SARS first broke out in China and caused a global crisis last year, killing about 800 people and infecting around 8,000.
The WHO said that while there was no solid proof that civets indeed were the source of the confirmed SARS case, there was circumstantial evidence.
"Certainly there is a reason to suspect transmission not just from civet cats, but also from other animals," Dietz said.
China's leading SARS expert Zhong Nanshan, for one, ruled out a return of last year's mass epidemic, given the current evidence.
"I don't think this means a massive return of SARS," he was quoted as saying by the Yangcheng Evening News. "It's absurd to say this will lead to a SARS epidemic."
As of yesterday, there were still no signs of a mass SARS outbreak, despite some false alarms.
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