April 5, 2003	Saturday	Safar 2, 1424

SINGAPORE, April 4: The sixth death from SARS was reported in Singapore on Friday as the health minister said the outbreak may be coming under control.

The new fatality was a 29-year-old Singaporean woman who was already sick when she returned from Beijing on March 26 and had to be brought by her mother to the hospital from the airport.

Authorities have tracked most of the 48 passengers with her on the Southern China Airlines flight and had put them under mandatory home quarantine as a precautionary measure.

The sixth death aside, there are signs the situation was improving in Singapore, which has instituted extraordinary measures in dealing with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) as the atypical pneumonia is known.

As of Friday, the total number of people diagnosed with SARS totalled 101. Of these, six have died, 69 have recovered and 26 are in hospital, 12 of them in serious condition, the health ministry said in a statement.

Only one new case — a 28-year-old Indonesian maid who was in contact with a SARS patient — was reported on Friday. The number of suspected SARS cases is at 45, including three children.

The original index cases are the three women who first returned to Singapore from Hong Kong and spread the disease here.

Aside from the three index cases, four other people contracted the disease outside of Singapore. Index cases are crucial because each of them can spark a chain of infection through their contacts with others, making it harder to contain the spread.

SARS, a virulent form of pneumonia which still has no known antidote, has killed more than 80 people and affected more than 2,400 others wordwide.

Meanwhile, a team of international health experts visiting south China said on Friday that the killer pneumonia that has claimed more than 80 lives worldwide may be contracted without direct physical contact.

The alarming possibility emerged as the group, dispatched by the World Health Organization (WHO), visited the city of Foshan, where the first cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) were detected.

“There are 24 cases in Foshan so far, (and) there are five with no contact,” said Chris Powell, a WHO spokesman.

“There was no physical contact, so it must have been contracted through infected (objects),” he said, giving furniture or elevators as examples.

At first, SARS was believed to be spread by heavy droplets, expelled in close proximity by someone who, for instance, sneezes or coughs.

But a big cluster of cases in a 33-storey apartment block in Hong Kong has raised the theory that the virus may also be carried by water or by small droplets that linger in the air and are then inhaled.

Foshan is the city where the first case of SARS was discovered, and has now become the epicenter of an epidemic that has swept the globe.

Members of the WHO delegation on Friday met with health officials in Foshan and were briefed about the known cases. —AFP