WASHINGTON, April 10: Scientists said on Thursday they had identified the virus behind the deadly respiratory illness spreading worldwide and proposed naming it after a doctor who first identified the disease and later became a victim.

The new coronavirus, a relative of one of the many viruses that cause the common cold, is, as suspected, new to humans, two research teams reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The finding means that doctors can now concentrate on developing a simple test for the virus that will tell them right away whether a patient has Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, has three such tests but says they are not suitable for everyday use.

In one of the studies reported on Thursday, the CDC’s Dr. Larry Anderson and colleagues tested samples from patients in six countries with SARS..

“Nineteen patients with SARS have been identified as infected with the new coronavirus. All have direct or indirect links to the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong and Guangdong province, China,” the researchers said in their report released early by the journal.

“A coronavirus with identical (genetic) sequences has also been detected in a patient with SARS in Canada.”

They said the virus should be named after Dr. Carlo Urbani, the World Health Organization doctor who died of SARS last month after treating one of the first patients infected with the virus in Vietnam.

“Because of the death of Dr. Carlo Urbani during the investigation of the initial SARS epidemic, we propose that the virus be named Urbani SARS-associated coronavirus,” they wrote.

SARS is marked by a high fever, dry cough and other flu-like symptoms but it progresses to pneumonia. Some patients must be put on respirators to help their lungs function.

About four percent of patients with SARS die.

SARS, which was spread around the world by travelers, has killed an estimated 110 people and infected more than 3,000. But authorities in the United States and other countries believe they have the infection under control.

In China, Hong Kong and Singapore, areas hardest hit by the virus, the picture is less clear.

The CDC, World Health Organization and doctors in affected areas, eager to find the root of the mystery disease, tested for the usual suspects, such as influenza and other known bacterial and viral causes of pneumonia, which turned out negative.

SUSPECT VIRUSES: At first a virus related to measles, mumps and some other more exotic diseases emerged as the cause of SARS, but scientists later ruled that out.