SARS lab to be probed

BEIJING (AP) -- An international team of experts is coming to examine a sealed-off SARS research lab in Beijing where two workers became sick, a World Health Organization official said Saturday.
In what could be the world's first SARS death this year, the mother of one of the workers died last week. Several hundred lab employees and people with whom the ill people came into contact were reported in quarantine.
The WHO team of two or three experts in lab biosafety will work with a group from China's Health Ministry in the next few days, said Dr. Julie Hall, leader of WHO's SARS team in Beijing.
They will interview lab workers, take samples and study equipment at the virus control institute at China's Centers for Disease Control, Hall said.
"From all of that, they will hopefully be able to draw conclusions on whether those cases were contracted in the lab and, if there is a link, what happened and what sort of breach of biosafety occurred," she said.
The WHO team, assembled at the request of the Chinese ministry, may also travel to eastern Anhui province, where one of the lab workers and her mother are from, Hall said.
The mother died Monday, although Chinese officials said SARS had not been confirmed in her case. They said she had a heart condition, but it was not immediately clear if that was a factor in her death.
A statement on WHO's Web site said the woman had "clinical symptoms ... compatible with SARS."
If her case is confirmed as SARS, it would be the first death from the disease this year.
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