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Petrol shortages are developing in Guangdong Province, the industrial belt that produces one third of China's manufacturing exports. Drivers are reportedly having to queue for rationed petrol and shortages are hurting petrol station profits. Refiners are also limiting output of some fuels in the face of soaring crude oil prices and domestic price caps, the official China Daily reported. But there is no sign of export truck traffic grinding to a halt. Shortages appear to involve the cheapest grades of petrol, which are being phased out by refiners as unprofitable, Reuters news agency reported. Cheap petrol vanishes "I've seen business...

China's secret bird flu 'puts world at risk' By Adam Luck in Hong Kong (Filed: 18/01/2004) China is refusing to disclose the origins of a "bird flu" virus lethal to humans which could make Sars look like "a puff of smoke", say angry scientists and World Health Organisation officials. They fear that the country's notorious Guangdong province, from where the Sars virus began to spread last winter, could be the source of the flu, which has killed at least 13 people, most of them children, in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan in recent weeks. The Chinese authorities deny that the...

HONG KONG, Jan. 11 — Health officials said today that they had been notified of a third suspected case of severe acute respiratory syndrome in China's adjacent Guangdong Province, and they expressed growing worry over the weekend about the possibility of another outbreak here. The latest patient is a 35-year-old man with no recent history of travel to Hong Kong and no apparent contact with wild animals — the suspected source of some cases — said Dr. Thomas Tsang, a community medicine consultant for the Hong Kong Department of Health. Dr. Tsang said that while Guangdong officials had notified Hong...

Rats are next China's SARS hitlist January 07 2004 at 01:45PM Beijing - China's quest to stamp out Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has spread from the slaughter of civet cats to rats as the southern province of Guangdong ordered a large scale rat extermination campaign, state media said on Wednesday. Communist Party and government officials in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, have stipulated a city-wide effort to kill rats or mice between January 10 and 13, the Guangzhou Daily said. Residents are encouraged to set rat poison in their homes, block all channels of entry for the rodents, including drains...

<p>China on Monday confirmed its first SARS case since an outbreak of the disease was contained in July and authorities ordered the emergency slaughter of some 10,000 civet cats and related species after tests linked a virus found in the animals to the patient.</p>

China Orders Cats Killed After SARS Tests By JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writer BEIJING - China on Monday ordered some 10,000 civet cats in wildlife markets killed in its southern province of Guangdong after genetic tests suggested a link to a suspected SARS (news - web sites) case. Also Monday, authorities denied reports that a second suspected case of severe acute respiratory syndrome had been found in Guangdong. All of Guangdong's wildlife markets were ordered to close, Feng Liuxiang, deputy director of the province's health department, said on national television. Civets are considered a delicacy in Guangdong and are served...

KUALA LUMPUR -- A Malaysian woman has been hospitalised and tested for Sars after developing a high fever on a trip to China, including a visit to Guangdong province, officials said on Monday. The 31-year-old woman was found to have fever, a cough and a sore throat upon her arrival at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, according to The Star daily. Deputy health director-general Ismail Merican said the woman had been isolated at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital but her fever had subsided and her x-rays were normal. 'We are still waiting for the lab report but we believe...

China braced for new Sars outbreak John Aglionby Saturday January 3, 2004 The Guardian (UK) China braced itself yesterday for a return of the deadly pneumonia-like Sars virus after genetic tests on a suspected patient in the southern city of Guangdong showed a "high correlation" with the virus's gene sequencing, according to government-controlled media. China's health ministry said more tests were needed before the 32-year-old male television producer could be confirmed as having severe acute respiratory syndrome. The World Health Organisation, which has been liaising with the Chinese authorities since the man started showing symptoms last month, said it would...

Confusion reigns over suspected SARS case   18:23 30 December 03   NewScientist.com news service   A suspected case of a man infected with the SARS virus, has been reported in China. More tests are being carried out as a "confused laboratory picture" emerges. Some reports suggested on Tuesday that SARS had indeed been confirmed by laboratory tests on samples from the 32-year-old television producer. Previous incidents since the world was declared SARS-free in late June, have proved to be either false alarms or isolated accidents in laboratory workers. For example, a case of SARS was confirmed in a medical researcher in Taiwan...

Chinese Sars scare gathers pace The case is not yet confirmed China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have stepped up their screening of travellers following a suspected case of Sars in southern China. Chinese health officials say a man from Guangdong province with symptoms of Sars is in a stable condition. He and medical staff who had contact with him have been quarantined. The World Health Organisation is sending an expert to Beijing to review what it called the confusing results of initial tests on the man. "So far the tests have been mixed, in testing done so far there have...

<p>SARS first emerged in Guangdong, with evidence suggesting it jumped from animals to humans.</p> <p>BEIJING (CNN) -- A health official in China's Guangdong province has reported that a man suspected of having SARS has been identified and isolated in a hospital in the provincial capital of Guangzhou.</p>

HONG KONG, Saturday, Dec. 27 — A free-lance television employee has fallen ill 80 miles from here in southern China with what doctors suspect is SARS, health officials here and in mainland China said on Saturday afternoon. The unidentified man has the clinical symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome, including a full-blown respiratory tract infection and fever, said P.Y. Lam, Hong Kong's director of health. But a laboratory test for antibodies against the virus was inconclusive, possibly because blood was drawn for the test early in the illness, while a genetic test for the virus has not yet been completed,...

A PATIENT in a hospital in southern China is being treated as a suspected case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). "This suspected case has been reported to the health ministry," an official of the Guangdong provincial health bureau said today. "The ministry has to now send specialists to determine if it is indeed a SARS case." The patient is in hospital in Guangzhou city.

A restaurant in southern China's Guangdong province is doing a brisk business in rat dishes, ignoring all warnings to stop serving wildlife to prevent the spread of SARS, state media said Sunday. The eatery, in the city of Zhuhai, sells more than 100 rats a day, the Xinxishibao or Information Times reported. Some of the rats are caught in farm fields, while others are from the mountains. Southern Chinese believe rodents are safe to eat or turn into wine if they are caught in the countryside. However, regardless of whether they are from rural or urban areas, they can transmit...

Gene study narrows source of SARS 19:00 04 September 03 NewScientist.com news serviceThe SARS-like virus found in a food market in Guangdong, China jumped from animals to people - and not the other way around - suggests new research. The study represents an important step in tracing the original source of the virus. However, the work still leaves many important questions about the route of transmission of the SARS virus to people unanswered. In May, the researchers, led by Yi Guan at the University of Hong Kong, revealed initial results of tests on a SARS-like coronavirus isolated from market animals...

HONG KONG, Thursday, Aug. 14 - Chinese agriculture officials in Beijing have allowed farms to resume selling masked palm civets, a species that may have been the source of the SARS virus, and 53 other exotic species, although Chinese provinces retain the discretion to bar human consumption of these animals. Following complaints from farmers and animal dealers, the State Forestry Administration issued a circular earlier this week allowing the sale of farm-raised animals from the 54 species, while maintaining a ban on the sale of animals caught in the wild, saying they might not be free of viruses. The circular...

Aids, the Ebola Virus, monkey-pox, and SARS are all diseases that probably started in wild animals and switched to humans.It now appears likely that the recent outbreak of SARS got its start from the close contact between Chinese animal merchants and their wares.The people of Guangdong Profince in southern China are famous for eating "everything with four legs except a table, everything that flies except an airplane, and everything that swims except a submarine," and support a brisk trade in cats, snakes, bats, dogs, civet cats, pangolins, and anything else hunters can get their hands on.People like the taste, but...

NEW SARS CASE IN CHINA China has reported a new case of SARS just a day after the World Health Organisation declared the country free of the virus. Health officials said the country remained on high alert for the flu-like virus after the new case in the southern Guangdong province. The new case had been previously suspected and was later confirmed as being Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. One death from a previously confirmed case was also recorded in Beijing, the health ministry said. WHO spokesman Bob Dietz said it did not affect the UN health agency's decision to declare China...

Virus detectives seek source of SARS in China's wild animals Researchers investigating the source of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have turned their attention to the wild-animal markets of southern China. The move follows reports that workers and animals at the markets show high rates of infection with coronaviruses, the family to which the virus believed to cause SARS belongs. The possible link to wild animals emerged on 23 May 2003, when a team from the University of Hong Kong revealed that a coronavirus resembling the SARS virus had been isolated from 6 masked palm civets (_Paguma larvata_) and a...

Situation in 'SARS-free' city anything but calmBy Asia Times Online Staff HONG KONG - Pingtang is a small suburb on the outskirts of Changsha, capital of south-central China's Hunan province. All vehicles heading toward Changsha from Xiangtan now must pass through Pingtang. During the climax of local anti-SARS efforts, authorities established a temporary traffic checkpoint where everyone who was coming or going received a compulsory body-temperature check and each vehicle passing through was inspected. Last week, however, this checkpoint was converted into a station for fighting the flooding of the Xiang River, a main waterway in the province. After the...