Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)

Bird Flu and SARS
Bird flu and SARS are both respiratory viruses and both can be fatal. Understanding their similarities and how they differ could help you prevent both these killer viruses.

China in Denial Over Foot and Mouth Cull
Attempt to hide slaughter echoes response to bird flu and Sars.

China Frees Surgeon After 're-education'
The Chinese military surgeon who exposed the government's cover-up of the Sars crisis was released yesterday after seven weeks of "political re-education", his family said. Jiang Yanyong, 72, a semi-retired general in the People's Liberation Army, had been detained at a secret location...

Sars Hero Detained for 're-education'
China admits interned doctor is being held for 'educating'.

Sars Hero Held Over Tiananmen Letter
China admits interned doctor is being held for 'educating'.

Sars Doctor Joins 'disappeared' on Tiananmen Anniversary
As dissidents mark 15 years since massacre, campaigner is said to have been spirited out of Beijing.

More Sars Cases in China
China reported two new cases of Sars yesterday amid growing fears that the Labour Day holiday would be disrupted again. One woman was in a critical condition as the authorities quarantined 700 people in Beijing. Four people have been confirmed with Sars in the past month and five other...

Bird Flu Could Be Worse Than Sars, Un Warns
Bird flu is spreading across south-east Asia and could soon pose a far worse threat to humans than Sars, UN officials said yesterday. The warning came as a sixth death from the disease was confirmed and as Thailand's Prime Minister was forced to deny accusations that his government had...

China To Kill 10,000 Palm Civets
After a man in Guangdong Province in southeastern China was reported ill with a strain of SARS similar to that found in palm civets, Chinese officials have ordered the closure of wild animal markets and the immediate killing of all captive palm civets in the province.

New Bird Flu Could Be Worse Than Sars
The bird flu ravaging several east Asian countries - and which has been blamed for the deaths of at least three Vietnamese people - could precipitate a more serious global health crisis than Sars if it spreads by human contact, the World Health Organisation warned yesterday.

China Sees Second Sars Case
China reported its second suspected case of Sars in a week yesterday, prompting a race to control the deadly virus before the lunar new year holiday season. The outbreak, after a six month hiatus, appears to have panicked the authorities. The reporter and editor in chief of the newspaper...

Exotic Animals to Be Culled As Sars Returns to China
Chinese authorities launched a "patriotic" extermination campaign against civet cats, badgers, raccoon dogs, rats and cockroaches yesterday, after confirming the country's first case of Sars for six months. The planned slaughter of more than 10,000 animals in Guangdong province is a...

China Braced for New Sars Outbreak
China braced itself yesterday for a return of the deadly pneumonia-like Sars virus after genetic tests on a suspected patient in the southern city of Guangdong showed a "high correlation" with the virus's gene sequencing, ac cording to government-controlled media.

Taiwan Sars Case Brings New Jitters
Taiwan suffered flashbacks of face masks and public panic yesterday as the island reported its first confirmed case of Sars since the summer. A medical researcher tested positive after working on the virus without following safety procedures, such as wearing gloves and a medical gown...

Shanghai Residents Still Eating Wildlife Despite Warnings
A recent survey of Shanghai residents has found that many continue to eat wildlife in spite of fears of SARS and warnings against eating wild animals.

Dogs Beaten To Death In China
Fear of the SARS virus and the rumors that the virus can be transmitted from household pets to humans has unleashed a brutal wave of dog killing in China, according to recent news reports from the region.

Chinese Economy on Course to Outstrip Uk
China, the world's fastest growing economy, is on course to overtake Britain in two years or so, according to figures released yesterday that show national output is moving forward so fast that the country is in danger of overheating. With fears of Sars receding, the economy surged 9.1%...

Electronic chip to detect Sars
Singapore hopes to launch in January an electronic chip that will give an almost instant diagnosis of whether a person has Sars, dengue fever, flu or some other respiratory illness.

Alarm in South-east Asia As Tests Confirm Sars Case
Two months after the global outbreak of the Sars virus was declared to be over, Singapore announced that a 27-year-old medical researcher had tested positive for the disease. The news sent shock waves throughout Asia, still recovering from the economic impact of the last outbreak, and the...

Sars Epidemic Could Recur
Only two out of nine experts say humans are safe. Sars, the virus which emerged in China in February and spread to 32 countries, killing more than 800 people, might re-emerge in the autumn, say health experts.

Hong Kong Sars Outbreak Ends
Hong Kong breathed a huge sigh of relief yesterday when the World Health Organisation removed it from the list of Sars-affected areas, after four months in which almost 300 people died and 1,750 were infected. No new cases have been reported in the territory for 20 days, allowing the WHO...

Motorola blames Sars for Asian dip
Mobile phone network and handset manufacturer Motorola yesterday plunged the communications industry back into gloom as it warned that sales in the Asia Pacific region had been hit by the Sars outbreak.

Researchers to Conduct SARS Tests on Animals
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Organization for Animal Health have asked a team of Australian scientists to infect a number of chickens, pigs and cats with the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) to help determine if the disease originated in animals.

SARS Prompting Isolation and Killing of Beijing Pets
Authorities in Beijing, China are soon going to begin relocating to remote areas or killing pets belonging to individuals who have been quarantined in order to prevent the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) from spreading.

SARS Prompts Crackdown on Wildlife Trade
Speculation among scientists that the virus responsible for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) can be contracted by consumption of wild animal meat recently prompted Chinese officials to raid thousands of restaurants, hotels and animal fairs.

Irish doctors call for end to Sars ban on Special Olympics competitors
The Irish Government is under growing pressure to remove its ban on Special Olympics athletes travelling to Ireland from Sars-affected countries, after the World Health Organisation lifted its travel warning on Hong Kong this weekend.

Sars fear comes back to Toronto
Canada is reeling from the shock of discovering it may have at least 20 new cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), less than a month after health experts gave it the all clear for foreigners travelling there.

In China the Civet Cat is a Delicacy - and May Have Caused Sars
The question has stumped scientists since the Sars virus first emerged in China and spread around the world: where did it come from? Now, researchers in Hong Kong have identified the culprit - the masked palm civet, a small cat-like mammal that is treated as a culinary delicacy in some...

WHO drops Hong Kong travel warning
The World Health Organisation today lifted its travel advisory against visiting Hong Kong and Guangdong, the southern Chinese province where the Sars virus is thought to have originated.

Sars Virus 'came From Outer Space'
It is not surprising that the World Health Organisation has had trouble fighting the Sars virus. According to one academic, it has probably came from out of this world.Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology - a body founded by Cardiff University and the...

Economic Liberalisation Destroyed China's Health Service
Economic liberalisation destroyed China's health service - now it must rely on police, not doctors, to fight Sars writes Isabel Hilton.

Health checks on Chinese leader to calm Sars fears
The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, is receiving immunity-boosting injections, cutting down meetings and undergoing a daily health check to ensure he does not stir Sars fears on his first overseas trip.

All-American heist makes comeback
The "war on terror", financial hard times and even the fear of Sars are being linked to an upsurge in the most traditional of all American criminal activities: robbing banks.

War and Sars take toll on Hilton
Hilton reported a 25% drop in profits in the first four months of 2003, as bookings at its hotels in Europe and Asia plummeted because of the Sars virus and the war in Iraq.

China Threatens Death to Anyone Spreading Sars Deliberately
China warned yesterday that anyone who deliberately spreads the Sars virus may face execution, and those who violate quarantine may be jailed for seven years. The warning by the country's supreme court is based on a law defining a "threat to public safety" in the context of Sars as a...

Air Canada Grounds Planes As 'ruinous' Sars and War Hit Home
Canada's cash-strapped national airline is to ground 40 aircraft due to a "terrible" slump in passenger numbers caused by fears about the deadly Sars virus at its busiest hub, Toronto. Air Canada - which filed for bankruptcy protection last month - yesterday revealed that Sars had cost it...

Sars Cases in China Pass 5,000
World Health Organisation officials today arrived in China to study the potentially devastating spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome in rural areas, with the latest set of statistics on the disease making grim reading. The number of Sars cases in China has now passed 5,000. In...

A Nation's Fate is Sealed
Forget Sars or the North Korean threat, Japan's biggest worry is the fate of one aquatic mammal, writes Jonathan Watts.

Fears for Taiwan As Sars Drops in Beijing
The east Asian Sars outbreak, which Chinese officials said showed signs of declining in Beijing, today appeared to be accelerating in Taiwan with the single largest daily increase in cases on the island. It reported 18 new Sars cases, the most since the virus first struck there two months...

AsiaSars threat to Chinese HIV region
Thousands of migrant workers are fleeing Sars-hit cities to their homes in a Chinese province already badly affected by HIV-Aids, as fears grow that the virus could spread even more quickly in the vast rural areas.

Sars Fear Hits Russia
Russia today reported its first Sars case, as Moscow ordered airlines to stop taking bookings to China and other areas at the centre of the global outbreak. Russia's civil aviation service said it had told all carriers to prepare for a complete ban on flights to China, Hong Kong and...

Sars Still Out of Control, Warns Who Director
The World Health Organisation said yesterday that the Sars outbreak in China was still out of control, despite increasingly tough quarantine measures. Gro Harlem Brundtland, its Norwegian director general, told EU health ministers in Brussels that there was "still a considerable number of...

Sars Sparks Chinese Riots
Thousands of people in Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai, went on the rampage at the weekend in protest at the Chinese government's inability to control the spread of Sars. Reports of the violence coincided with the health ministry's announcement of nine further deaths, taking the...

Violence As Sars Spreads in China
Farmers in a town in eastern China beat up officials and ransacked a government office where at least six local residents suspected of having Sars had been quarantined after returning from Beijing, a witness and local officials said today. Beijing, China's hardest-hit area, isolated 80...

Sars Hospital Opens in China
A hastily built Sars isolation facility went into operation outside Beijing today, as China reported 11 more people had died from the virus and a further 176 were infected. The surge in new cases - with 100 people being infected every day in the capital alone over the last week - has...

Sars Dna Sequenced But China Shuts Down
Researchers have begun the first close look at the molecular makeup of the Sars virus, as Beijing's usual May Day exodus of millions of travellers to and from the countryside ground to a halt yesterday. Detailed studies of the complete DNA sequence of the virus - first recorded late last...

Sars Death Rate Expected to Rise
Health experts gathered in Canada today to consider ways to prevent the spread of the Sars virus, while the World Health Organisation warned that the death rate from the disease appeared to be climbing. Just over 100 health experts meeting in Toronto, a city where 23 people have died of...

Local heroes
"The little mayor with the big heart" made his way into the earshot of the world last week with an impassioned denouncement of the World Health Authority after it advised travellers not to go to the Canadian city because of the perceived Sars threat.

Barriers Go Up As Sars Fears Grow in China
Streets empty of all but rumours while hastily built hospital prepares for first patients.

Drugs firms to cooperate on Sars vaccine
GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical giant, today pledged to cooperate with rivals to find a possible vaccine against the Sars virus.

Beijing Sars Infections Continue to Rise
· Chinese capital faces 'critical week'
· Travel restrictions imposed
· Confirmed cases rise to 3,460

China Opens Door to World Help With Its Sars Crisis
China opened itself to unprecedented external scrutiny yesterday in a desperate bid to contain its Sars epidemic and restore its image after an inconsistent approach to the crisis. The new prime minister, Wen Jaibao, insisted after an emergency summit with south-east Asian leaders in...

Asian Leaders Meet to Discuss Sars
· Cases in N Zealand, S Korea, Mongolia
· China's crisis worsening, WHO fears
· Worldwide death toll reaches 333

Sars outbreak is peaking, says WHO
The world appears to be winning the war against Sars, the World Health Organisation announced yesterday, though China's outbreak is still cause for major concern.

Sars Hurts Stagecoach in Hong Kong
Stagecoach yesterday revealed a slump in the number of people using its local bus network in Hong Kong as people have been staying at home for fear of catching the deadly Sars virus. The transport company said revenue from its Citybus business in Hong Kong was likely to be down 25% during...

Sars Puts Brake on France's China Trip
April 29: France announced yesterday that it will not send its cyclists to the world track championships in the Chinese city of Shenzhen in August because of the Sars epidemic.

WHO: Sars Contained in Vietnam
The Sars outbreak has been contained in Vietnam, the World Health Organisation announced today, but said that in the worst affected country, China, the disease was continuing to spread. In the first positive news to emerge from the crisis, the WHO declared Vietnam the first country to...

Beijing Theatres and Bars Closed in Crackdown
Beijing yesterday imposed sweeping measures to close down theatres, discos, internet bars and other places of entertainment as the city's total of Sars cases climbed higher.

Sars deadlier than first thought
Sars, the virus that has caused panic across the globe, is deadlier than was first thought, British experts will reveal this week. But predictions that it will kill millions of people are unlikely to come true.

Chinese football put on hold
China's domestic soccer season has been postponed because of fears over Sars, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) has announced.

Airport Rules Relaxed to Help Ailing Airlines
The European commission lent a helping hand to ailing airlines yesterday by waiving strict rules governing the use of airport slots, because of the impact of Sars and the war in Iraq. Following a meeting of transport ministers, the commission announced it was temporarily dropping "use it...

Flying low
Just as the airline industry thought the worst was over with the swift conclusion to the Gulf war, the Sars virus has struck with devastating consequences.

The new killer threatening rich and poor alike
Sars is a global danger and should shake the west's complacency. The White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, sometimes called Baby Hotel or the Stork Inn, is one of the places in China where western couples, most of them American, spend their first days with their newly adopted Chinese children.

Beijing Hospital Quarantined
Officials in Beijing sealed off one of the city's major hospitals today to prevent health workers from spreading the Sars virus. Police prevented anyone from entering or leaving the 1,200-bed Beijing University People's Hospital while it is disinfected and its staff and patients moved to...

Panic grips Chinese capital
The Chinese authorities ordered the closure of thousands of schools in Beijing and instructed their 1.7 million pupils to stay indoors yesterday in as further attempt to halt the spread of the Sars virus.

Global trade forecast grim as epidemic 'promotes instability'
The spread of the deadly Sars virus could put the brakes on global trade growth in the year ahead, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) warned yesterday.

Global Battle Against Sars Panic
The World Health Organisation yesterday strongly advised people not to travel to Beijing and the Chinese province of Shanxi, or to Toronto, in a dramatic escalation of the global battle to control the spead of the Sars virus. The British government immediately endorsed the new measures,...

WHO Travel Warning As Sars Death Toll Mounts
The World Health Organisation today warned against travel to Toronto, Beijing and China's Shanxi province as the death toll from Sars continued to climb. Officials in Canada confirmed Toronto's 15th death from severe acute respiratory syndrome, a flu-like disease that, so far, has been...

Beijing Schools Shut Due to Sars Fears
Struggling to contain a recent jump in the number of Sars cases, officials in the Chinese capital, Beijing, today announced that they will shut down public schools for two weeks to keep students from spreading the disease. The school closures begin tomorrow and will affect 1.7 million...

Asia unable to mask Sars cost
It is with a guilty sigh that Yoshi Izumi admits his firm is doing rather well out of the virus that is terrifying millions of people in Asia and threatening the economies of several nations in the region.

100 More Sars Cases in Beijing
Beijing yesterday added more than 100 cases to its Sars total, only one day after the figure had been revised upwards 10 times in a dramatic but belated recognition of the crisis. The Chinese capital's total now stands at 458 with 20 deaths, in contrast to the previous official figure of...

Chinese cover-up creates new sense of insecurity in face of Sars epidemic
Rumours swirl around Beijing and public confidence has slumped. Popular restaurants are becoming empty and many try to avoid using the metro and bus system. Flights from Beijing airport are being cancelled or merged as passenger numbers decline.

China Says Sars Outbreak is 10 Times Worse Than Admitted
The Chinese government sacked its health minister and another senior official yesterday in an attempt to establish credibility for its handling of the Sars health crisis as the death toll continued to mount. Officials also conceded that the problem in Beijing was nearly 10 times worse...

China Sacks Minister Over Sars
China's health minister, Zhang Wenkang, and Beijing's mayor have both been sacked over the outbreak of Sars, official news agency reports said today, while seven more deaths from the virus were announced in Hong Kong. Earlier, China cancelled one of its biggest celebrations, May's...

Sars Takes Biggest Death Toll in One Day
As the virus spreads relentlessly to a 25th country, scientists are racing to defeat an epidemic now threatening Asia's economy.

Hong Kong mops up as Sars toll rises
Twelve more Sars patients have died in Hong Kong, pushing the death toll there to 81, officials said today, following a largely symbolic cleanup organised by government leaders struggling to restore the territory's badly tarnished image.

Sars Spreads to India
The first suspected cases of Sars were today reported in Australia and India, as signs emerged that the Chinese government was beginning to admit the extent of the deadly disease in the country. Universities in China's capital, Beijing, announced they had cancelled some classes in a bid...

China 'still Hiding' Many Sars Cases
Beijing may have more than five times as many Sars cases than it has admitted, a World Health Organisation official said yesterday.

Sars Claims Young Victims in Hong Kong
Chinese president ends silence on epidemic. Health officials in Hong Kong are trying to establish why six relatively young patients suffering from Sars - the pneumonia-like disease which has spread from the mainland - have died.

Young People Predominate in Latest Sars Deaths
Another seven people have died from Sars in Hong Kong, raising the country's death toll from the virus to 47 and the global figure to 140. What has surprised doctors in Hong Kong, though, is that six of the people who died recently were relatively young with no other illnesses. Until now,...

Hong Kong Sars Toll Reaches 40
Five more Sars patients have died in Hong Kong, health officials said yesterday. The latest deaths from the flu-like, severe acute respiritory syndrome pushed Hong Kong's total to 40 and, together with three more fatalities reported in Singapore, took the global toll to at least 133...

Hong Kong bans Sars travellers
Indonesia and the Philippines joined the list of countries affected by the deadly atypical pneumonia sweeping the world yesterday.

Quarantine tags to curb Sars spread
Singaporean authorities have ordered that people quarantined for the mystery Sars virus be electronically tagged in an attempt to contain a new cluster of cases.

Singapore Dispatch: How the Country is Coping With Sars
John Aglionby visits the country with the highest Sars-related death rate. Last Saturday, Singapore thought it had contained, if not quite beaten, the mysterious and undefined bug known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, which from its southern China origins has now reached every continent and killed more than 100 people.

Singapore Disptach: How the Country is Coping With Sars
Singapore has the highest Sars-related death rate of all the countries infected but the government says the country is coping well, writes John Aglionby.

China Accused of Sars Cover-up
A senior Chinese doctor today accused his government of covering up details about the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), while a Beijing hospital was shut down, reportedly because medical staff became infected. Even as state media repeated the government's claim that the...

Chinese Withdraw From Marathon Due to Sars
April 9: Two Chinese runners have withdrawn from Sunday's Rotterdam marathon because of the Sars virus.

Fifth Likely Uk Sars Case Confirmed
A man who returned from the far east last month was confirmed yesterday as Britain's probable fifth case of the pneumonia-like illness Sars. He travelled to the UK from Taiwan on March 29 and was admitted to hospital in the east of England on April 5. His condition was described as stable...

Focus: Race to Beat the Sars Bug
In a high-security London laboratory, scientists work around the clock to understand the killer Sars virus. Half a world away in a Singapore hospital, the victims fight for their lives. Jo Revill and John Aglionby report.

Hong Kong hit by Sars costs
The pneumonia-like illness spreading through Hong Kong is threatening to have a major impact on the former British territory's economy as tourists stay away, business travel is axed and local residents shun bars and shopping centres.

Denial the Cure for Chinese Government
The Chinese authorities are only just getting the message that withholding information about SARS is endangering its citizens, writes John Gittings.

Mystery Disease Spreads: 75 New Cases
Seventy-five people have been infected by a mystery flu bug in Hong Kong in the last day, bringing the total number of cases in the city to 685. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a pneumonia-like virus that has killed 63 people and infected almost 1,900 in 12 countries, is being...