WASHINGTON, March 19: Doctors said on Wednesday they were homing in on a possible cause of a mysterious global outbreak of pneumonia, naming a family of viruses responsible for everyday measles and more exotic diseases such as Nipah virus.

Teams in Hong Kong and Germany said they had found evidence of a virus known as a paramyxovirus in at least some of the patients with the illness, called severe acute respiratory syndrome.

They stressed that more tests are needed before the virus is pinned down as the culprit, but said it is the best clue yet about the cause of the syndrome, which may have killed as many as 14 people and sickened hundreds more.

“From the shape of the virus, it belongs to the paramyxoviridae family,” said microbiologist John Tam of the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Health Minister Yeoh Eng-kiong told reporters that Germany and Taiwan had found patients with a virus similar to the one found in Hong Kong.

World Health Organization officials said they believed the infection was coming under control outside of Asia. Cases have been reported in Canada — where two patients died — Germany, France, Spain, Belgium and Finland.

“The outbreak, we feel, is on its way to containment at least outside of Vietnam and Hong Kong, and China if it is linked,” David Heymann, WHO’s head of communicable diseases, told a news conference.

WHO officials think the illness, marked by high fever and a dry cough followed by severe breathing difficulties, is the same as killed five people and infected more than 300 in southern China between November last year and February.

It is difficult to assess how many people are affected until a microbe is identified, but WHO officially reports 219 cases outside China, including more than 120 in Hong Kong, nearly 60 in Vietnam and 23 in Singapore. It reports four deaths — two in Canada, one in Vietnam and one in Hong Kong.

Local authorities have logged more cases than the WHO. Hong Kong authorities reported four more deaths and Vietnam reported one, bringing the potential death toll to 14.

Laboratories have been working around-the-clock to identify the microbe causing the illness, first ruling out the most common and probable causes, such as influenza virus.

Scientists from WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were preparing to go to China, where the outbreak appears to have started, to see what clues they can find.

Health officials in the affected countries speak daily to coordinate efforts. WHO and CDC have also been analyzing samples and looking for clues.

Paramyxoviruses are a large group and include measles and mumps. But they are also a cause of what health experts call emerging infections — diseases never seen before. Nipah virus, which killed 105 people in Singapore and Malaysia in 1998 and 1999, is a paramyxovirus believed to have been carried between pigs, people and fruit bats.

FIRST CASE IN FRANCE: France reported its first suspected case of a deadly strain of pneumonia on Wednesday which is thought to have killed at least 14 people and sparked worldwide alarm.