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A Vietnamese nurse has become the latest person to die after contracting a mystery virus, bringing the worldwide death total to 22 on 24th March.
The illness, known as ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome’, or SARS, had already killed another Vietnamese nurse and a French doctor working at the Vietnam-France Hospital in Hanoi. All three are thought to have been exposed to the virus after treating an American businessman admitted with a flu-like illness in February. The businessman later died in hospital in Hong Kong.
A male health worker from the Hanoi hospital is under observation in Tourcoing Hospital in northwest France, suspected of having SARS.
In a separate move, more than 700 people in Singapore are to be quarantined in a bid to contain the spread of the illness. Sixty-five people, including three children, have been infected in Singapore. Twelve are in a serious condition, including eight who are on a ventilator.
News of the latest cases comes as a World Health Organization (WHO) expert claims the condition could have existed, unnoticed, for many years. Dr John Mackenzie, an Australian virologist, told AFP news agency: "We might well find that the disease, or the agent that causes that disease, has been around for a long time, but we haven't recognised it previously.
"You don't know it's a new disease, really, until this cluster of cases occurs as an epidemic."
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