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The W.H.O. has organized a network of 11 laboratories around the world, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, to seek the cause of SARS and help develop diagnostic tests. But in the absence of a diagnostic test, the network is working on the assumption that the coronavirus causes SARS. It is a gamble the researchers are unhappy to be taking. The C.D.C. has developed two promising but rudimentary tests. But the tests need substantial refinement before they can be used widely, in part because they cannot detect infection from the new coronavirus in its earliest stages. Also, the tests must be validated by tests on thousands of additional specimens from SARS patients and healthy people, the C.D.C. has said. Still, late last week C.D.C. began releasing to state health departments findings from experimental tests conducted among suspect cases in this country. The tests measure the amount of antibodies that these individuals' immune systems formed to fight the new coronavirus. But the C.D.C. cautioned against interpreting that the findings proved the virus caused SARS and that these individuals had it

The man had been exposed to the disease in mid-March when he was an outpatient at the Scarborough Grace Hospital in Toronto, where the initial outbreak of SARS in Canada occurred. But officials did not think he had SARS until after the man's funeral Thursday, after members of his family started coming down with the disease

China has faced intense international criticism for being slow to release statistics on SARS from southern Guangdong Province, where the disease originated last November. Today, it appeared to be following that pattern of secrecy in its capital. Health statistics, particularly embarrassing ones, are often regarded as official secrets in China, and official secrets are tightly guarded in Beijing. There were no SARS deaths in the United States, where health officials are investigating 115 suspected cases from 29 states. That group includes 43 people who had been hospitalized and 27 who had suffered pneumonia, a main complication of SARS. Four of the 115 had had close contact with ill patients and 2 were health care workers exposed to the same patient. At least two wards at You'An Hospital have been cleared to screen and treat potential SARS cases, one health worker there said, adding that many are on oxygen and some are assisted with ventilators. On the hospital grounds, the majority of doctors and nurses now wear masks and nervously shoo visitors away

The case occurred in a man who was treated in a provincial hospital about two hours from Hanoi, which has been the center of the illness in Vietnam. The unexpected appearance of a new case raised the specter that the disease had spread into the countryside and might have infected health care workers in an area where infection control measures are substandard. Masks, gowns and other barrier nursing equipment are being sent to the hospital to help improve its infection control. But there was concern about the potential need for similar measures elsewhere in Vietnam. ''People in Guangdong are working and living normally,'' he said. He added that there was no evidence that the virus was spreading widely in Beijing. Chinese officials have been stung by accusations that they concealed or ignored information about the disease in the initial months, and failed to act promptly. At yesterday's briefing, the minister sidestepped questions about why China had been so slow to reveal details about the illness or to involve the World Health Organization in its control, and why it had sharply restricted coverage of the disease by the domestic press. A passenger arriving at Los Angeles International Airport from Taiwan yesterday wore a surgical mask as a precaution against SARS. (Monica Almeida/The New York Times); A tourist had the bus almost to herself in Hong Kong yesterday. The World Health Organization has recommended against elective travel to Hong Kong, which has been hit by the SARS virus. (Getty Images)

It took only a few dry coughs to spread a mysterious respiratory illness to clusters of health workers in Asia and to kill Carlo Urbani, 46, the World Health Organization doctor who first identified it. And it took only a few airplane passengers for the illness to reach 15 countries in Asia, North America and Europe. Now, one person has apparently spread the illness to scores of residents of an apartment complex in Hong Kong, and the government has put the entire complex in isolation and closed all schools. In Toronto, two hospitals have been closed to new patients. The patterns of transmission raise the possibility that the illness, known as SARS, for severe acute respiratory syndrome, can be spread through the air or contaminated objects as well as close face-to- face contact. The events justify the bold alarm that the World Health Organization set off at a time when cases and deaths were few in number, on March 15, when it declared SARS 'a worldwide health threat.' The organization then hastily created a network of 11 infectious-disease laboratories in nine countries to track down the cause of SARS. Officials at the World Health Organization, a UN agency, cannot recall the last time the agency has issued a global alert for an acute outbreak of a disease. The agency has long had networks of laboratories for influenza and other diseases, but such networks have rarely been pressed into emergency service. In less than two weeks, with an alacrity and a degree of cooperation seldom seen in science, the laboratories identified two previously unknown viruses as the leading suspected agents. (They belong to the coronavirus and paramyxoviridae families.) But because of the danger of the illness, the UN agency is restricting research on it to its network. All laboratories in the network operate at the second- highest hazard level, known as P-3, reserved for all but the most deadly pathogens. Far from being the last link in the discovery process, identification of a new virus in a laboratory is only the first of many steps needed to prove that a suspect virus actually causes a disease. It is likely to take weeks more to determine which virus, singly or in combination, actually causes SARS. In that time, the leading suspects may be displaced by other candidates. For now, the leading suspect is a coronavirus, though proof is far from certain. The family takes its name from the crown of spikes that surround the spherical virus. Known coronaviruses cause the common cold and are suspected of causing diarrheal and other intestinal illness in humans. Though pesky, the ailments are rarely fatal. But in animals, coronaviruses can cause devastating illness among cats, dogs, chickens, pigs and cattle

The vaccine did seem to significantly lower the infection rate among African-Americans and other non-Hispanic minorities participating in the trial, the company said. Its researchers called this finding totally unexpected and said they were at a loss to explain why there would be ethnic differences in response to the vaccine. They conceded that the findings, though statistically significant, might change if the vaccine were tested among more members of minorities, who were only a small fraction of the people in the trial. The vaccine, known as Aidsvax, is made from a protein called gp120, the same protein that protrudes from the surface of HIV and helps the virus dock with cells of the body's immune system. The protein in the vaccine is made in genetically engineered hamster ovary cells. Since the vaccine consists of only one protein and not the whole virus, it cannot give someone AIDS. But it is designed to provoke the immune system into making antibodies that will latch on to the gp120 protein in the real virus and the virus from infecting immune cells. Most mainstream AIDS researchers have said they do not believe the approach will succeed. For one thing, HIV mutates rapidly and there are a number of subtypes of the virus, which themselves may have many different strains. VaxGen's vaccine is designed to elicit antibodies to only two strains of subtype B, the type most prevalent in North America and Europe

Once the organs arrived, [Jesica Santillan]'s heart and lungs were removed and the donor organs were implanted. Santillan was removed from the heart-lung bypass machine and the organs functioned well for 30 or 40 minutes. Then they began to fail and Santillan was returned to the machine. Moments later, the operating room heard the from the transplant immunology lab: 'The transplant was ABO incompatible with the recipient.'

The vaccine, known as Aidsvax, is made from a protein called gp120, the same protein that protrudes from the surface of HIV and helps the virus dock with cells of the body's immune system. The protein in the vaccine is made in genetically engineered hamster ovary cells. Since the vaccine consists of only one protein and not the whole virus, it cannot give someone AIDS. But it is designed to provoke the immune system into making antibodies that will latch on to the gp120 protein in the real virus and the virus from infecting immune cells

Medical errors are thought to be responsible for as many as 98,000 deaths in the United States every year, and the nation's most august hospitals are far from immune. The errors have often resulted, as in Duke's case, not from a failure of cutting-edge medicine but from lapses in the most basic safety procedures. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences reported that medical errors kill 44,000 to 98,000 people a year and that many of these deaths could be prevented by improving safety measures. Most medical errors do not result from individual recklessness, but from basic flaws in the way hospitals and clinics operate, the report said

''This is the first demonstration of protection in humans, and one of the most significant findings in H.I.V. vaccine research in many years,'' Dr. [Jose Esparza] said. Though the vaccine is ''not the final product that we need for public health use'' and is not ready to be licensed for sale, he said, it ''should give encouragement to all vaccine developers.'' The vaccine, known as Aidsvax, is made from a protein called gp120, the same protein that protrudes from the surface of H.I.V. and helps the virus dock with cells of the body's immune system. The protein in the vaccine is made in genetically engineered hamster ovary cells. Since the vaccine consists of only one protein and not the whole virus, it cannot give someone AIDS. But it is designed to provoke the immune system into making antibodies that will latch on to the gp120 protein in the real virus and prevent the virus from infecting immune cells. The [VaxGen] researchers also said they would study blood samples from participants who received the vaccine, and would compare antibodies from those who became infected with antibodies of those who remained free of the virus. They hope to identify which antibodies actually protect against infection, rather than simply signaling that infection has occurred. The identification of such antibodies, known as correlates of immunity, might greatly assist future vaccine development