Woman's death sparks new Sars alarm

China confirmed two cases of Sars today and said the mother of one patient has died, apparently the first Sars fatality in the country since last July. Hundreds of people have been quarantined.

Trying to prevent an epidemic, the government announced it would start disinfecting public buildings and take the temperatures of travellers at all ports of entry.

“Anyone who has a temperature over 38C will be taken to hospital,” said a Health Ministry statement published in Chinese newspapers. “No one will be exempt.”

The confirmed cases had both worked in laboratories in Beijing for China’s Centres for Disease Control and were probably infected there, Xinhua said.

They were identified as a 31-year-old man from Beijing and a 26-year-old woman in central Anhui province, the first cases confirmed in those areas since last summer.

A 20-year-old nurse in Beijing is also sick with a suspected case of Sars, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The mother of the woman in Anhui has died, and is believed to have contracted the illness from her daughter.

“When the daughter was ill, the mother accompanied her all the time,” the health ministry said.

The mother was taken to hospital on April 8 with a fever and an unidentified pneumonia-like virus, the statement said. She died on Monday.

The daughter was treated last month for viral pneumonia at Beijing’s Jiangong Hospital, where she came into contact with the nurse who was identified as a suspected case.

In Anhui, 117 people were quarantined and one person showed symptoms of fever - a key symptom. In Beijing, 188 were quarantined and five reportedly had fevers.

Sars triggered a global health crisis last year that killed 774 people – 349 of them in mainland China.

More than 8,000 were taken ill around the world.

Health workers were deployed today at Hong Kong’s airport and a railway station to check the temperatures of passengers arriving from the Chinese mainland.