- LONDON (Reuters) - The SARS
virus which has triggered panic across the world could be more deadly but
less contagious than previously thought, a leading medical expert said
on Saturday.
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- Professor Roy Anderson, an authority on infectious diseases
at Imperial College London, said he feared the virus -- Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome -- was killing around 10 percent of those infected.
Anderson's findings, to be published next week in a medical journal, are
based on figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) but arrive at
slightly different conclusions.
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- "If one looks carefully at the WHO figures on mortality
and recovery rates, it is running, unfortunately, at 10 percent,"
Anderson told BBC Radio.
The WHO has said the syndrome, which spreads via coughs and sneezes but
can also be transmitted by touching contaminated objects, has a death rate
of around six percent.
Anderson said his study of around 1,400 SARS victims from Hong Kong suggested
the virus was more difficult to pass from one person to another than had
been feared.
"This is not a highly transmissible infection," he said. "It's
been effectively contained in most of the developed countries in the world
with a very limited number of cases, Britain being a good example."
SARS has killed at least 289 people worldwide and infected around five
thousand since it emerged in southern China late last year. It has no known
cure and has been carried to more than 20 countries by air travelers.
The disease has caused widespread alarm in mainland China and Hong Kong.
China recorded seven new deaths on Saturday, taking the toll reported to
122, with around three thousand cases, while Hong Kong raised its fatality
count by six to 121, with 1,527 cases.
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