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New variety of SARS less contagious, scientist says

A new variety of the SARS virus that has emerged in southern China appears to be less contagious than the strain that killed more than 800 people worldwide last year, a Hong Kong scientist said yesterday.

The present strain does not appear to be as well adapted to infecting humans as the one last year, said Guan Yi, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong and a leading expert on the SARS virus.

"The virus this year is a new virus strain. It behaves like a virus in an animal and is not well adapted to humans, so its transmission ability [among humans] is low," Guan said.

"That is why contacts of these victims [in China] have not been infected."

Guan identified the present strain as a SARS virus, but said research had shown it was not a descendant of last year's virus, which infected more than 8,000 people in about 30 countries.

Both are believed to be from the same family of coronaviruses, which also cause the common cold.

China confirmed last week that a 32-year-old television producer in Guangzhou had been infected with the disease, the country's first case in months. The man has since recovered.

Hong Kong Cable Television said on Tuesday a waitress had been confirmed as a second case, though the Chinese government says it is still awaiting conclusive test results.

Another man is also being tested for the disease.

Scientists believe droplets from coughs or sneezes carry the SARS virus directly within a radius of up to 2m. It can also survive on surfaces outside the human body for three to six hours.

In the latest scare, not a single person of the scores who came in contact with the three Chinese is known to have been infected.

But authorities in the region, whose airline and tourism sectors were pummelled by the outbreak last year, are not taking chances.

Hong Kong, an hour's train ride away from the southern Chinese city where the SARS case was confirmed, has stepped up border checks. Nearly 300 people died in the city in the outbreak last year.

Some public hospitals in Hong Kong are already being stretched as health authorities begin to isolate all pneumonia patients as part of their efforts to thwart a return of SARS, a severe form of atypical pneumonia.
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