New suspected Sars case in China

By Louisa Lim
BBC correspondent in Beijing

China has reported a new suspected case of the respiratory disease Sars.

There are fears Sars could spread during the May Day holiday

This brings the total to two confirmed Sars patients and seven suspected cases.

The announcement comes as a World Health Organization team began investigating how a graduate student was infected with Sars in a laboratory.

The WHO says about 1,000 people are now in isolation, but says that so far there is still no significant public health threat.

The latest suspected Sars case is a 49-year-old retired doctor, who shared a hospital room with another suspected Sars patient.

The Ministry of Health says she is in critical condition.

A WHO spokesman told the BBC he was concerned that infection is still occurring within hospitals.

He said infection control and bio safety in laboratories would be issues for the team of advisors in China.

They will be tracing back how the original source of this outbreak became infected. She was a graduate student working in a laboratory in the National Institute of Virology.

Those in isolation are in Beijing, and in the eastern province of Anhui, where there is one suspected case.

Last year, Sars killed almost 800 people worldwide, but this time the WHO says the situation is still under control.