China sealed off a SARS research lab in its capital yesterday after two lab workers fell ill and the mother of one died in what could be the world's first SARS fatality this year.
A nurse who looked after one of the ill lab workers caught the disease and was also in isolation, the government said.
The lab infections and their transmission to others "are an embarrassment to China," said World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Bob Dietz. "It's not good that this happened in the lab. It's not good that the health of these people was apparently not monitored."
However, the virus is "not out in the public," he said. "The Ground Zero has been identified."
Also yesterday, the Health Ministry said there were no new cases of SARS.
The virus control institute at China's Centers for Disease Control was sealed off and would remain so until at least May 7, the ministry said on its Web site. More than 180 of its workers were quarantined in a hotel in Beijing's outskirts, state newspapers reported -- along with pictures showing the workers in face masks taking a bus to a hotel Friday night.
Chinese health officials said a 26-year-old woman who worked in the lab was confirmed to have SARS. She is believed to have infected her mother, who died on Monday.
The daughter was treated last month at a Beijing hospital, where she came into contact with the 20-year-old nurse, who is also now a confirmed SARS case, the Health Ministry said.
A colleague at the Centers for Disease Control lab -- a 31-year-old Beijing man -- is listed as a suspected case, the ministry said on its Web site.
Officials said they hadn't confirmed whether the lab worker's mother died of SARS.
A statement on the WHO Web site said she had "clinical symptoms ... compatible with SARS." But a man who answered the phone yesterday at the Beijing municipal Health Bureau and wouldn't give his name said she was still a "suspected case."
"Whether her death was related to SARS or not needs further pathologic analysis," the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The government newspaper China Daily tried to put the incident in a positive light, citing health experts who said "the silver lining" was that the virus came from a laboratory, which reduced the risk to the general public.
But WHO said the lab worker and her mother took several train trips together between Beijing and the eastern province of Anhui and might have exposed many other people to the virus.
Hospitals along the line have been put on alert to report any cases of pneumonia, said Maria Cheng, a WHO spokeswoman in Geneva.
"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.
SARS first emerged in southern China in November, 2002, and the Chinese government was criticized internationally for initially being slow to publicize information about the disease. It vowed to be more open.
Last year's SARS outbreak triggered a global health crisis, killing 774 people around the world and infecting more than 8,000. China reported 349 deaths, with its last confirmed fatality last July.
China said yesterday it 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 virus were being held under medical observation.
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