Sars: Experts find animal link

World Health Organisation experts said they had found "very good evidence" in China suggesting an animal link to the Sars infection, uncovering traces of the virus in the restaurant where a suspected patient worked and civet cats were served.

But Dr Robert Breiman also said that severe acute respiratory syndrome should not be considered an immediate public health threat in China -- a reassurance pivotal in its timing, days before hundreds of millions of people begin travelling around the country for the Chinese New Year.

In samples from the Guangzhou restaurant that employed a 20-year-old waitress suspected to have Sars, "tests revealed on each cage the Sars coronavirus", Breiman said.

"Not only were there civet cats there, but at some point civet cats that were carrying the Sars coronavirus."

He said traces were also found on swabs taken from the city's largest live-animal market.

"I think there is very good evidence to think animals are the reservoir and the way the disease gets started," Breiman said, adding: "We still don't know what role the civet cats play in spreading the virus."

Wild animals have long been a delicacy in Guangdong, and many suspect that exposure to or consumption of them may be linked to the spread of Sars -- and even its origins in late 2002.

Breiman emphasised that there was no way to know when the virus was deposited in the restaurant's cages or whether it was connected to the waitress' case.

He said, however, that the virus in the one confirmed case this season appeared "milder" than it was last year, and that research was necessary to determine if this year's Sars was slightly different from last year's strain. "Is this a variant of Sars?" he wondered aloud.

Breiman also said it was possible that rodents played a role in spreading the virus. Guangdong has spent much of the week targeting and killing thousands of rats, a week after it carried out a mass eradication of civets.

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