China reports four new suspected SARS cases

China was investigating four new suspected SARS cases in the capital today - days after it confirmed two cases linked to a Beijing research lab.

This was an unsettling development just before a major holiday sends millions travelling around the country.

All of the new suspected cases have been traced back to a single patient, the government said today, suggesting the problem was still tightly confined.

But it was an alarming reminder that the disease responsible for killing 349 people in China during last year’s outbreak still poses a threat despite efforts by the government to make sure it did not return.

The latest four cases announced the Health Ministry on its web site brought the total for the past week to two confirmed and six suspected. The new suspected cases are the father, mother, aunt and roommate of a 20-year-old confirmed SARS patient in Beijing, the ministry said.

The other confirmed case of the past week is a 26-year-old medical student in the southern province of Anhui.

“According to the information we’ve gotten from the government, the transmission we’ve seen so far has been happening with … people who have been in close contact with people who probably have SARS,” Beijing-based World Health Organisation spokesman Bob Dietz said.

“When we start to see ‘effective transmission’ – spread through the general public through normal contact, not intense personal contact – that’s when we feel we’ve reached another stage,” Dietz said.

“We haven’t reached that stage. If it comes, we really are in something much more reminiscent of last year.”

SARS first emerged in southern China in November 2002. It triggered a global health crisis, killing 774 people around the world and infecting more than 8,000.

The Chinese government came under fire internationally for initially being slow to publicize information about the disease. It has vowed to be more open.

The coming May Day holiday is a time when millions of Chinese travel within their borders on holiday. Many stream to Huangshan, a popular scenic mountain resort in Anhui, the province where one confirmed SARS case and one suspected death from the disease were reported on Friday.

The province’s Tourism Administration issued what it called an “emergency circular” today and called for “immediate action to prevent the spread of SARS.” Provincial tourism offices were ordered to stay open “around the clock.”

As it cautioned against panic, WHO agreed to dispatch a team of experts to help investigate links between a SARS research lab in Beijing and the severe acute respiratory syndrome cases being investigated last week – two of which involved lab workers.

The workers became sick at the research lab in the Chinese capital, WHO said. And in what could be the world’s first SARS death this year, one worker’s mother died last week in Anhui. Though Chinese authorities said she had a heart condition, WHO said she had “clinical symptoms ... compatible with SARS”.