TORONTO: New research suggests the SARS virus, which killed 800 people after emerging in China in 2003, may spread through the air, and not just through human contact, making it more dangerous than previously thought. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus was discovered in the air in a patient’s room in Toronto, according to a Canadian study published in the new edition of the US-based Journal of Infectious Diseases.

A second study, based in Hong Kong, found that patients in hospital bays near a SARS patient had a much higher infection rate than those further away — consistent with the pattern of airborne transmission of disease.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America, which publishes the journal, said the Toronto findings are “the first experimental confirmation of the presence of the SARS virus in the air of an infected patient’s hospital room.”

But the Canadian doctors cautioned their results “do not document any cases of airborne transmission of the SARS virus from one person to another, only the dissemination of the virus from an infected patient to the air, via breathing or coughing.”

Although there is no “direct proof” of airborne transmission of SARS, Dr Ignatius Yu, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong said “no other known routes of infectious diseases transmission could adequately explain the spread of the disease in the outbreak, and hence we feel that the evidence is quite strong.” —AFP