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WHO bolsters case against civets

An injured dog is sold as food at an exotic game market in Guangzhou on Thursday. World Health Organization experts on a fact-finding mission in the capital of Guangdong said yesterday they found evidence of the SARS coronavirus in such markets. PHOTO: REUTERS

WHO experts bolstered the case against civet cats as a prime suspect in the spread of SARS yesterday, saying it found traces of the deadly virus in cages in a restaurant where a patient served up civet dishes.

Fearing further spread of the disease, Chinese health experts said the southern Guangdong province, where China's one confirmed and two suspected SARS cases have emerged -- would permanently ban trade and consumption of the furry, weasel-like animals.

WHO scientists also found evidence of the SARS coronavirus in wild animal markets in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, Robert Breiman, head of the WHO team, told a news conference.

But he stressed the animal has not yet been confirmed to be the source of SARS.

"It doesn't prove anything, but it showed that the civet cats carried the virus," Breiman told a separate news conference earlier yesterday.

China ordered a cull of civet cats in Guangdong when it confirmed in early January that a 32-year-old television producer had contracted the disease in Guangzhou, the first case since the SARS epidemic was declared over last July.

The two other suspected cases, one a 20-year-old waitress in an exotic game restaurant, had yet to be confirmed.

Guangdong closed some animal markets and cracked down on illegal trade in wild game, which scientists say is a reservoir of disease, at the height of the SARS outbreak last year. But the markets reopened within a few months, sparking criticism that the province was not doing enough to prevent another epidemic.

Earlier this week, Zhong Nan-shan, head of the Guangzhou Res-piratory Disease Research Institute, said a survey showed that 70 percent of civet cats carried the SARS virus while 40 percent of game traders carried SARS antibodies.

The evidence implicating civets was enough for Guangdong authorities to make the ban permanent.

"The Guangdong government is very determined to strictly regulate civet cats -- no catching and consumption will be allowed. It should be a permanent decision," Xu Ruiheng, deputy director of the Guangdong center for disease control, told a news conference.

Both Chinese officials and Breiman said rats may also have a role in transmitting the virus but tests are still underway and no conclusion can be drawn for now.

The cases in Guangzhou all had relatively mild symptoms compared to sufferers of the last outbreak, but Breiman warned against drawing conclusions just yet.

"Is this a variant of SARS? Is it less lethal? These questions will have to be resolved in labs later on," he said.

Some researchers in Hong Kong studying samples from the three patients have described the virus as a new strain.

The SARS episode in Guangzhou has been overshadowed by a bird flu now ravaging parts of Asia, which has caused three deaths in Vietnam, and is possibly linked to another nine.

Breiman was confident that Guangdong was ready to detect cases of bird flu given its high level of vigilance against SARS.
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