China reports a new diagnosed SARS case

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, February 01, 2004

China reports a new diagnosed SARS case

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China's Health Ministry announced here Saturday that a new diagnosed SARS case was confirmed in the southern Guangdong Province, increasing the number of SARS cases on the Chinese mainland to four this year.

But the patient, a 40-year-old man surnamed Liu, was already discharged from hospital several days ago upon total recovery, the ministry's spokesman said.

All the people including nine in close contact and 39 in loose contact with Liu have undergone medical observation or home quarantine and showed no abnormal symptoms, said the spokesman.

The spokesman said the patient, a doctor in a hospital of the provincial capital Guangzhou, developed fever on Jan. 7, 2004. He had a body temperature of 37.4 Celsius, accompanied by sour throat,snuffle and tiredness.

The patient went to a clinic of the No. 1 hospital attached to the Guangzhou Medical College on Jan. 13 and chest X-ray on Jan. 14 showed inflammation on his right middle lung.

On the early morning of Jan. 16, the patient's body temperaturereached 39 Celsius. He went to the outpatient department of afore-mentioned hospital and was hospitalized in the hospital's department for respiratory diseases. The diagnose to the patient then was pneumonia.

After bacteriophage treatment, the patient got normal temperature on Jan. 18 and since then remained in stable condition.

The spokesman said the patient denied having had any contact with animals or SARS patients recently. During the SARS outbreak last year, he neither had infected with SARS nor had had any contact with SARS patients.

On Jan. 18, the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Controland Prevention (CDC) together with Guangzhou CDC carried out laboratory tests on the patient's blood and throat samples. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests turned out negative.

On Jan. 23, antibody tests showed positive on the patient's blood samples and the antibody levels increased by four times. Based on the tests results, on Jan. 24 the Guangzhou experts team diagnosed the case as a suspected SARS case.

On Jan. 25, the Guangdong provincial experts team discussed thetests results of the case and believed the patient can be diagnosed as a SARS case.

The spokesman said the Health Ministry received reports from the Guangdong provincial health bureau on Jan. 26 and then appointed the China National CDC to check the samples of the case.

On Jan. 27, the PCR tests done by the National CDC on the patient's feces and throat samples turned out negative, but antibody tests on the blood samples showed positive.

The spokesman said the patient's samples were then sent to the network laboratories of the World Health Organization (WHO) for verification.

On Jan. 30, the tests results of the WHO network laboratories showed that the PCR tests were positive on the patient's blood samples collected on Jan. 14 and feces samples of Jan. 20, but negative on the feces samples of Jan. 24, the spokesman said.

Based on all the tests results, the experts believed the case can be diagnosed as a SARS case, the spokesman said, adding that the Health Ministry has forwarded relevant information to the WHO China office.

Except for the diagnosed case in Guangdong, no diagnosed or suspected SARS case was reported in other places of China during the past 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry's SARS monitoring report.

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No new SARS case on Chinese mainland

Two SARS cases in Guangdong confirmed

Third suspected SARS case confirmed in Guangdong

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