Tokyo

China is rushing to quell public fears after confirmation on 5 January of the first naturally acquired case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) since the disease was contained in July last year.

The patient, a television producer from the southern province of Guangdong, became ill on 16 December. He was isolated in hospital in the provincial capital of Guangzhou, and is now making a good recovery. The quarantine has been extended to 81 of his contacts, all of whom have remained healthy. “The system of identification and contact-tracing seems to be working,” says Julie Hall, the Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response Coordinator for China at the World Health Organization (WHO).

The case was confirmed by tests carried out at two laboratories in Hong Kong and one in Beijing, which found a sharp rise in the patient's production of antibodies to the SARS virus. Researchers at the University of Hong Kong also say that the patient's virus is a close genetic match to samples taken from masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) and other animals in the markets in and around Guangzhou. On the basis of these results, provincial officials plan to kill some 10,000 civets currently held for sale for food.

But experts are questioning this strategy. “Raccoon dogs, badgers, ferrets, house cats and rodents can all carry the SARS virus,” says Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. “A more comprehensive approach is needed.”

Meanwhile, concern about the resurgence of SARS has spread to the Philippines, where a domestic maid working in Hong Kong who returned home for a holiday has shown suspicious symptoms. Tests for SARS were being conducted as Nature went to press.