SARS Symptoms Force Quarantine of 11 at U.S. Air Base

Estimated read time: Less than a minute

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

Washington (dpa) - Nine U.S. military personnel and two relatives were in quarantine Saturday after exhibiting symptoms of the respiratory illness SARS.

Initial tests produced negative SARS results for eight of the patients and showed at least two to be suffering streptococcus pneumonia.

One of the military members recently returned from an air show in Canada and passed through the airport in Toronto on the way, according to reports. Toronto experienced an outbreak of the disease this spring.

The 11 people at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas began reporting respiratory problems. None has been confirmed as having Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

The U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC) reports there have been 74 probable cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in the United States.If the Air Force crew is determined to have SARS, the CDC could reinstate the warning.

Since the disease broke out in Asia late last year, at least 800 people worldwide have died from SARS.