A 35-year-old man has been isolated in hospital in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province for SARS observation, officials said Sunday.

"The Ministry of Health has received the report from Guangdong health authorities on Saturday that a man with some SARS symptoms has been isolated in hospital for medical observation," Mao Qun'an, a spokesman told China Daily Sunday.

Mao was echoed by Roy Wadia, a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman in Guangzhou with a team of WHO experts. Mao also said local physicians are attempting to diagnose the case.

"There's always been a problem with case definition with SARS actually identifying a case. So we want to understand clearly the basics that Guangdong is using," WHO Beijing office spokesman Bob Dietz said in Beijing.

Medical experts have yet to confirm the man as a suspected case. So the local health authorities did not report the case as a suspected one to the Ministry of Health.

Apparently, the hospitalized man has had no contacts with any SARS patients or infected wild animals. Both the 32-year-old confirmed SARS patient, surnamed Luo, and the 20-year-old suspected woman SARS patient, who were revealed last week are in Guangzhou. Just how they were infected is unknown.

The team visited Lijiang Garden, a community in Panyu District where Luo had lived, are trying to find if the virus source is there.

They have swept through the man's apartment interviewing people and looking for possible modes of infection in water systems, garbage facilities and living quarters.

"Our environmental experts scoured the building,'' Wadia said. "Based on the observations they made, the complex seemed to be managed pretty well. The upkeep was good. The management was extremely cooperative."

(China Daily January 12, 2004)