Quarantined. hundreds of people in China were isolated after exposure to a SARS patient.
for the third time in less than a year, an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) appeared to come from a failure in the containment laboratory. This latest incident, China revealed last week, is the most serious. One death is provisionally allocated to it, eight people are confirmed or suspected of contracting the disease, and hundreds have been quarantined.
The apparent lapse is particularly disturbing because it occurred in the first laboratory research on SARS in China, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Beijing. Also worrying, experts say, is that a lab worker traveled while she had symptoms of the disease. Despite this lapse, the Chinese authorities now seem to have the situation under control, said Robert Dietz, spokesman for the office of the World Health Organization (WHO) Beijing. The two previous laboratory accidents in Singapore in September ( Science NOW, 10 September) and Taiwan in December ( Science NOW, December 17) did not result in spread beyond the affected workers.
two Chinese case, a graduate student of 26, identified by his surname, Song, and a male 31-year-old postdoc Yang were both apparently exposed in the same laboratory at the Institute against viral diseases at the Chinese CDC. But Dietz said that the appearance of symptoms probably indicates two distinct exhibition events. Song developed symptoms of SARS on March 25; Yang, 17 April. The prospect of two separate exposure incidents suggests "a kind of system failures or process" in the lab, Dietz said. But he cautioned against any conclusion until the source of infection is confirmed.
Whatever the source, the epidemic can show "a failure in the application of guidelines to monitor the health of the people working in these labs," Dietz said. After working in the laboratory in Beijing, Song returned to Anhui. When she developed a fever, she traveled to Beijing by train, where she was treated at a hospital and released. Accompanied by her mother, she returned to Anhui by train , entered another hospital and was then transferred to a third party. on April 19 his mother died of pneumonia, probably a victim of SARS. a nurse who attended the song at the Beijing hospital contracted SARS and apparently spread the infection to several family members.
The authorities have now closed virus laboratory, and more than 0 institute employees were quarantined. Another 400 had been in contact with suspected cases of SARS have also been quarantined. Dietz said the WHO plans to have a team of experts in biosafety in Beijing this week to help the Ministry of Health are trying to identify the source of infection.
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