SARS Patients Relapse and Mortality Rates Rise

"[The SARS gene sequence shows] a unique coronavirus only distantly related to previously sequenced coronaviruses (in animals and humans). ...This virus may never before have circulated in the U. S. population."

- The New England Journal of Medicine, April 10, 2003

May 2, 2003  Hong Kong, China - Today, health officials in China reported another 176 new cases of the severe acute respiratory syndrome known as SARS, plus 11 more deaths. That boosts the world total to more than 6,000 cases and 402 deaths. That means the global average death rate for SARS is now about 7%. But in Toronto, Canada, which reports 147 cases and 20 deaths, the mortality rate is nearly 14%.

As new SARS cases continue to surge in the countryside around Beijing where thousands fled trying to escape the deadly virus in the nation's capitol, health authorities are afraid the death rate will climb higher in China as well.