- BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese
woman suspected to have SARS has died and two other people are confirmed
to have contracted the virus in a chain of infection spread from a national
research laboratory, the government said on Friday.
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- It was the first reported death from SARS since a deadly
outbreak last year claimed hundreds of lives worldwide.
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- China, the country worst hit by Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome, set up emergency controls as it confirmed two other people were
confirmed to have contracted the disease.
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- Hong Kong, which was also badly hit last year, raised
its alert level. The local government said in a statement it had sent extra
staff to the airport and the city's railway station that receives through-trains
from China to spot ill people.
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- China's health ministry said a woman died, apparently
of SARS, on April 19 after taking care of her daughter, a 26-year-old medical
student who studied for two weeks in a disease control laboratory in Beijing
before returning home ill to the eastern province of Anhui.
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- The daughter is one of the two patients confirmed to
have contracted by the disease. The other confirmed patient, a 20-year-old
nurse at a Beijing hospital, surnamed Li, had treated the medical student,
surnamed Song, it said in a statement on its Web site.
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- The ministry quoted experts as saying the source of infection
might have been the lab, adding it had been sealed.
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- "The investigation shows...the patient surnamed
Li in Beijing has epidemiological links with the confirmed SARS case patient
surnamed Song in Anhui," it added.
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- A 31-year-old male post-doctoral student who worked alongside
Song in the lab was also suspected of having the disease.
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- The cases in Beijing were the first recorded in China's
capital since it was ravaged by the outbreak last year.
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