[Brian S]

Some 60 people have been hospitalised, of whom just one has required assistance in breathing

If this trend holds, sounds like not much more than a nasty, nasty chest cold.

[Centurion2000]

Current fatality rates for this disease are sitting around 3%

[aristeides]

You think it doesn't sound serious because U.S. medical authorities define SARS so expansively, more or less any respiratory infection of someone who has been in one of the affected countries in Asia. That takes in many cases that are probably not true SARS.

Abroad, to be classified as having SARS, you have to have pneumonia, so that all the cases are far more serious.