WHO scours China TV producer's flat for Sars clues

Doctors from the World Health Organisation scoured yesterday an apartment building where China's only confirmed new Sars case lived, looking for clues as to how the 32-year-old man caught the flu-like virus.

The WHO was also no closer to determing whether a suspected Sars case, a waitress who worked in an exotic food restaurant in southern China, actually had the mysterious disease.

"We're at the apartment building talking to the building management, looking at the ventilation systems, the sewage systems and things like that," WHO spokesman Roy Wadia told Reuters by telephone from the southern city of Guangzhou.

In Hong Kong, the health department said a 35-year old man in China's southern province of Guangdong province was suspected of having Sars.

Consultant Thomas Tsang, citing information from Guangdong health authorities, said the new suspected case had been isolated in hospital while tests were done.

An official of the Guangdong health administration declined to comment on the report that a new suspected case had emerged.

WHO spokesman Wadia also declined to comment on the case pending official notification from the Health Ministry.

China confirmed last Monday its first case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome since a world outbreak was declared over in July. The patient, a Guangzhou television producer, recovered and left hospital on Thursday.

Health officials said a gene sample from the man matched that of a coronavirus found in civets, a weasel-like animal eaten as a delicacy in southern China and sold in crowded markets.