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Posted on 04/29/2003 9:26:06 PM PDT by FairOpinion

SOME patients in Hong Kong suffered relapses of SARS after being listed as recovered and discharged from hospitals, a health official has said.

Health Department spokesman Jimmy Lee would not provide numbers or details of the relapses, but said the number had been small. In a telephone interview, Lee confirmed news reports that one patient had fallen ill again and was readmitted to a hospital last Thursday after being discharged three days earlier.

However, University of Hong Kong microbiologist Malik Peiris said although relapses are "not a good thing", they were not surprising given how little was known about the virus that causes severe acute respiratory disease.

"We are still learning about the SARS disease so we cannot say it's not possible," Peiris said. He predicted patients with relapses can recover fully, based on experience with other diseases from coronaviruses, a strain of which experts believe causes SARS.

"From what we know from other animal coronaviruses, I don't think it would go on relapsing forever and ever," Peiris said.

Hong Kong has recorded 1,572 cases of SARS and 150 of the patients have died. But 759 have recovered and been discharged.

Also today, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts investigating Hong Kong's SARS crisis met researchers from the University of Hong Kong to discuss how SARS might be spread in ways other than person-to-person contact, WHO spokeswoman Kay McNiece said.

The WHO officials planned later to visit suspected hotspots at the hardest-hit Amoy Gardens apartment complex and collect samples in their efforts to determine whether the disease was spread through environmental factors, McNiece said.

More than 300 people were infected by SARS at Amoy Gardens and Hong Kong officials have blamed the outbreak on leaking sewage pipes while saying the disease might also have been spread in common areas such as lobbies and elevators. The WHO is conducting an independent assessment and says it wants answers and assurances the outbreak has stopped before lifting an advisory that travelers should avoid Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, a six-year-old girl from a Hong Kong tour group was still under observation for SARS symptoms after she and 32 other people were flown from Taiwan to Hong Kong early today in a jet chartered by the government. Taiwanese officials had earlier quarantined the group in a Taipei hotel.

Others from the tour group have been ordered into home quarantine for a week as a precaution.

The girl has had no fever for two days and her chest X-rays have appeared normal, Hong Kong's Health Director Dr Margaret Chan said yesterday. Taiwanese officials had earlier diagnosed the girl as a suspected SARS case.

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