Investigators suspect that all nine reported SARS cases in the recent Beijing-Anhui outbreak are linked to the China Center for Disease Prevention and Control's (CDC's) Institute of Virology, which had been conducting experiments using the live SARS coronavirus.

But the two workers in the institute who were infected are not known to have worked with live samples of the virus. Questions remain as to how the disease broke out again last month.

Zeng Guang, the CDC's leading contagious disease expert, said two investigations are now being conducted to determine the cause of the latest outbreak: one by a joint team of experts from the World Health Organization and China's Ministry of Public Health, and the other by a team from the Virology Institute. Neither team has yet been able to draw any conclusions.

"The research lab of the two infected medical researchers is not close to that where the live SARS coronavirus is kept. There are no ventilation ducts connecting these two labs. Since it is only spring, the central air conditioner was not operating yet. So the SARS virus must have spread some other way."

Since the end of last year, SARS has resurfaced four times in Asia, and three of the outbreaks were believed to have originated in research labs. Lab safety has once again become a major concern.

Says Zeng, "Lab safety should be considered from two angles: first, whether the equipment and facilities for the lab are up to standard; and second, whether there are loopholes in facility management. Management not only involves administrative rules, but also technical issues. For example, since we still don't know much about SARS, there is no set regulation on how to kill the live SARS coronavirus when conducting lab research."

Zeng said more tests must be done on the laboratory samples before a conclusion can be made. Protecting the health of researchers and perfecting hospitals' early diagnosis systems are also issues that require examination.

(Cri.com May 11, 2004)