Singapore man got Sars in lab

Singapore is now free of Sars again

A Singapore man who contracted the first case of Sars in five months caught the disease from the medical laboratory where he worked, investigators say.

The 27-year-old man, who has since recovered, was working on the West Nile virus, but poor procedures led to cross-contamination.

The country's health minister said Singapore had been lucky not to suffere a second outbreak of the deadly Sars, which killed 33 people there in the spring.

PROPOSED LAB REFORMS More staff training Better record-keeping New legislation

"The critical point is let us draw lessons from this, tighten up," said Khaw Boon Wan.

His words were echoed by Dr Anthony Della-Porter, a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert who headed the probe.

"It hasn't been a disaster, but it could have been," he said.

The health minister has announced plans for new legislation to improve standards at medical research laboratories.

Bad practice

The researcher tested postive for Sars on 8 September, a fortnight after he became ill. He was discharged from hospital eight days later.

The investigators said they could not determine when the West Nile virus which the man was working on became contaminated with Sars.

However, there was no doubt about the source of his infection.

The report blames "inappropriate laboratory procedures" for the contamnation.

The WHO-led team also pinpointed "insufficient" training of laboratory workers, and recommended that better records of virus samples be kept.

The report recommended that all virus stocks at the government-run Environmental Health Institute's laboratory be destroyed, to remove the risk of any further Sars spread.

The EHI director, Ooi Eng Eong, said that after decontamination the laboratory would limit its work to the dengue virus.