WHO looks into SARS-animal link in southern China

"They want to see what studies have been done and to see what the situation is like at breeding farms and at markets."

Alan Schnur, World Health Organization official based in Beijing

An international group of experts was in southern China yesterday to study links between the deadly SARS virus and animals amid fears that the disease could reappear as winter approaches.

"Their main mission is to collect information," Alan Schnur, head of the World Health Organization's (WHO) communicable disease office in Beijing, said.

"They want to see what studies have been done and to see what the situation is like at breeding farms and at markets," Schnur said.

Scientists have said viruses carried by wildlife in Guangdong Province, where SARS originated last November, are nearly identical to the coronavirus responsible for the disease.

But a final conclusion on which animal -- or indeed whether it was an animal at all -- was responsible for transmitting it to humans, has not been made.

The team in Guangdong consists of 14 experts from the WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN and China's Ministry of Health and Ministry of Science and Agriculture.

Schnur said studies in Hong Kong and China had showed the presence of the virus in rodent-like civet cats and other species but "whether it originated with them or whether they picked it up somewhere else, we don't know that yet."

"This is one objective of the team in Guangdong -- to pull together all the strands and see where we need to go from here."

The team are expected to visit markets, restaurants, a wildlife farm, a pig farm and the disease-control bureau before heading to Beijing for talks with Chinese officials.

Schnur warned there was no quick fix to the problem and said SARS could resurface as the weather conditions deemed suitable for its presence draw nearer.

"These sorts of things take time. It is not possible to predict when it [the source] might be isolated. We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

"No one is complacent at this stage. Several scientists have said it could come back, others have said it would have come back by now if it was going to return.

"We take all this very seriously. We are working with the Ministry of Health to set up processes so that if there are any related cases they can be jumped on rapidly."

SARS was carried from Guangdong to Hong Kong by a badly infected Chinese doctor, sparking a global outbreak that struck down more than 8,000 people and left more than 800 dead in 32 countries.

Some 349 of the fatalities and 5,327 of the infections were in China, with Beijing hardest hit.