China confirms woman who died in suspected SARS case had the virus

<br>BEIJING (AP) _ Officials confirmed on Friday that a 53-year-old woman who died last week had SARS as suspected, the Health Ministry said. It was the world's first confirmed SARS death this year.

Friday, April 30th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BEIJING (AP) _ Officials confirmed on Friday that a 53-year-old woman who died last week had SARS as suspected, the Health Ministry said. It was the world's first confirmed SARS death this year.

The announcement came as Chinese began their weeklong May Day holiday under the pall of SARS.

Travelers were being checked for fevers _ a main SARS symptom _ before being allowed to board trains and planes.

More than 90 million Chinese were expected to travel during the break and the government is eager to keep a new SARS outbreak from spreading.

The dead woman was the mother of a Beijing laboratory employee who contracted the virus on the job. The woman from the eastern province of Anhui has been identified only by the surname Wei.

Also Friday, the Health Ministry said no new SARS cases were reported in the 24 hours ending Friday morning.

Friday's announcement raised China's number of confirmed cases to five, with four of those patients hospitalized. Another four patients who have suspected cases also are hospitalized.

World Health Organization experts say all of China's current cases are linked to employees of Beijing's Institute of Virology _ which had SARS samples _ or others who had close contact with them.

The other confirmed cases are the dead woman's daughter, a nurse who treated the daughter at a Beijing hospital and the nurse's mother and aunt. Hundreds of people who had contact with them and suspected patients are isolated and under medical observation.

WHO says that because the cases are in such a limited group, they aren't a public health threat. But the agency wants to find out what went wrong with lab safety, and a WHO team visited the virology institute on Friday.

``Certainly we believe that there has been a failure there. Exactly what, we don't know,'' Dr. Julie Hall, SARS team leader for WHO in Beijing, told reporters.

``You need a system that can protect us and prevent the virus getting out of laboratories,'' she said. ``Secondly, you need a system that can quickly detect cases if they occur, and again there have been some weaknesses there.''

WHO has expressed concern that the sick lab worker who was the daughter of the dead woman took several long train trips from Beijing to Anhui, which might have exposed other passengers.

China's government said it was cooperating with the WHO investigation of its lab practices.

Last 349 people in China's mainland died of SARS. Worldwide, the disease killed 774 people and infected thousands.

It wants to prevent a recurrence of events last year, when 349 people in China's mainland died of SARS. Worldwide, the disease killed 774 people and infected thousands.