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Governments use controls to stop mystery virus

WASHINGTON, Saturday (Reuters) Health authorities implemented tough legal steps on Friday in a bid to control an outbreak of a mysterious virus believed to have killed more than 80 people around the world.

Officials in Hong Kong launched a hunt for residents who fled a badly hit apartment complex and U.S. President George W. Bush issued an executive order allowing the forced quarantine of patients.

Bush's order allows the Health and Human Services secretary to decide when a quarantine is needed. It calls for the "apprehension, detention or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of suspected communicable diseases."

It names Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has affected a suspected 115 people in the United States, as well as cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever and viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, Lassa and Marburg.

"This authority would only be used if someone posed a threat to public health and refused to cooperate with a voluntary request," HHS secretary Tommy Thompson said in a statement.

"This is just to make sure we are prepared for any eventuality," added White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

No one has died of SARS in the United States.

U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona said he supports pre-screening passengers for the virus before they board airplanes for international flights. "We think it's a good idea," he told reporters in San Jose, California.

More than 2,000 people are infected in 16 countries with the virus, which has yet to be positively identified.

Malaysia said on Saturday that a 64-year-old man who died in Kuala Lumpur six days ago was probably the country's first known victim of SARS. A senior health official said the man fell sick during a visit to Singapore and China last month. Hong Kong police were looking for members of 113 families who had fled an apartment block in the crowded Kowloon district badly affected by SARS. Other residents of the complex have been quarantined.

"If our Health Department colleagues think these people may infect other people, we'll use minimal force to send them to hospital for treatment," a police spokesman said. Hong Kong reported 27 new cases of SARS, bringing its total to 761, the highest number of infections after mainland China's nearly 1,200 cases.

China, criticized as having been slow to identify and then seek help for the initial outbreak of SARS, promised to work more closely with other countries.

China allowed a team of World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts to visit its southern Guangdong province, where the outbreak is the worst and where it is believed to have started late last year. Thompson said he spoke by telephone with Chinese Health Minister Dr. Zhang Wenkang and arranged for better teamwork.

"The minister of health was very cooperative," Thompson said in a statement.

"It is important that we be as open and collaborative as possible in finding solutions to this difficult problem. By working closely together, scientists and public health experts throughout the world will be in a stronger position to resolve this global outbreak."

Dr. James Hughes, head of infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control, told reporters the CDC had two diagnostic tests for SARS which it was distributing to state health officials.

He said CDC and WHO officials held an "unprecedented" webcast with doctors in mainland China, Hong Kong and elsewhere to compare notes on SARS.

Hughes said the United States was now monitoring 115 suspect cases of SARS in 29 states. The U.S. CDC has a much looser definition of SARS than other countries and defines mild cases of respiratory disease as suspected SARS if the patients have been to an affected southeast Asian country.

"This is an outbreak in progress and in evolution. We haven't seen the end of this," Hughes said. "It can certainly spread more, geographically." Chinese doctors said they had found evidence of a very common microbe, chlamydia pneumoniae, in some of the SARS patients and suggested that this might be the main suspect.

But Hughes noted that chlamydia is a common cause of pneumonia as well as sexually transmitted infections. "I don't think it will be playing a role here," he said. Hughes said the main suspect remained a new strain of coronavirus, best known as a cause of the common cold. He said evidence of coronavirus had been found by 11 different labs in several SARS patients.

Thailand added Canada to its list of high-risk areas and said doctors would board all flights from there on arrival to test passengers for symptoms of SARS. Canada has the third highest number of cases in the world and has had seven deaths. (Additional reporting by Adam Tanner in San Francisco, Steve Holland in Washington, Tan Ee Lyn and Carrie Lee and Hong Kong).

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