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''It is a setback, and the situation is really very concerning,'' Dr. David L. Heymann, the epidemiologist in charge of the W.H.O. polio eradication program, said in telephone interviews. ''But we cannot let the effort fail. We have no choice -- we have to stop transmission this year.'' Nigeria has exported polio to at least six West African countries in recent months, Dr. Heymann said. His team is awaiting molecular tests to determine whether the viruses isolated from the Benin and Cameroon cases came from Nigeria or one of the seven neighboring countries that have reported cases. They are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Niger and Togo. Cameroon and Benin are now conducting such campaigns in an effort to prevent the imported cases from spreading further. But the immunization campaigns are costly and put an added burden on countries that had previously eradicated polio because they take money from other important health programs, Dr. Heymann said

The spread of polio to Benin and Cameroon, which the Geneva- based U.N. agency is expected to announce this week, is a discouraging setback in its $4.6 billion effort to have polio join smallpox as the only diseases to be eliminated from the human population. The chief obstacle is opposition to polio immunization by some Islamic leaders in the state of Kano, in the northern part of the country. These opponents contend that the vaccine contains hormones that sterilize girls, [David L. Heymann] said

The spread of polio to Benin and Cameroon, which the Geneva- based UN agency is expected to announce this week, is a discouraging setback in its $6 billion (Canadian) effort to have polio join smallpox as the only diseases to be eliminated from the human population. Nigeria has exported polio to at least six West African countries in recent months, [David L. Heymann] said. His team is awaiting molecular tests to determine whether the viruses isolated from the Benin and Cameroon cases came from Nigeria or one of the seven neighbouring countries that have reported cases. They are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Niger and Togo. Nigeria's national health minister has agreed to attend the meeting, as has a representative of the state of Kano, where the opposition to polio vaccination programs is centred, Heymann said

The number of children's deaths has risen from the 42 reported late last month. Precise assessments of the severity of the flu epidemic for children are impossible because influenza is not nationally reported, said Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the centers, in Atlanta. The percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza rose slightly to exceed the epidemic threshold, a crucial determinant of the severity of an influenza season. The threshold is based on a statistical calculation that the centers derives from the number of deaths from pneumonia and influenza in 122 cities. The data usually reflects deaths three to four weeks earlier. In another step, the agency is asking state officials to consider making children's deaths from influenza routinely reportable. The sole estimate of children's influenza deaths is in an academic study that indicates that the total is 92 in an average year

The agency monitors influenza activity in a number of ways. One is a statistical calculation based on the number of deaths from pneumonia and influenza in 122 cities. By that measure, influenza exceeded the statistical threshold for a seasonal epidemic, for the first time, the week that ended Dec. 27. The calculation shows that the number of deaths from pneumonia and influenza have exceeded the usual number for recent weeks. But it will take a few more weeks to determine how many there will be. This season, the vast majority of influenza has been caused by a new variant of the virus known as the Fujian strain, which this year's vaccine was not developed to combat. Officials believe, however, that there is some cross-protection. The strain seems to have hit young children hard. The C.D.C. earlier reported 42 deaths in children from influenza this season. According to one statistical model, about 92 deaths in children occur a year on average in this country. Aventis, which is owned by Aventis S.A., said it would team with Crucell, a Dutch biotechnology company, to produce flu vaccine in cultures of human cells, rather than in hen's eggs, as is done now. But the new vaccine will not even begin to be tested in people until 2005 and will not be approved for use for several years after that

A Guangdong provincial official said that about 10,000 civet cats would be killed. [Zhong] said that there would also be an effort to trap and kill civet cats in the wild, but the Guangdong provincial official said that at least initially, the government would only try to kill civet cats at restaurants, on farms and in wild animal markets

''The precautionary killing of civets is the right decision, but it must not divert attention from the fact that our knowledge about SARS is incomplete'' and the source of SARS in nature is unknown, Dr. [Klaus Stohr] said in a telephone interview on Monday. He was a leader in the W.H.O. efforts to stop transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome last summer and later spent three weeks in China to review studies by scientists there . SARS is believed to have first jumped from an animal species to humans in Guangdong Province in November 2002. Dr. Stohr and some other scientists have criticized China for not having conducted the comprehensive studies that are needed to determine the source of the SARS virus in nature and how the virus is transmitted from animals to other species, as well as to humans. In experiments, scientists at Hong Kong University are injecting the civet SARS virus into monkeys to help determine its virulence for other species, said Dr. David Ho, who directs the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan. He also directed a joint AIDS-SARS laboratory at Hong Kong University

Officials in Guangdong Province in southeastern China ordered this morning the immediate killing of every civet cat in captivity in the province after researchers found that a Guangdong man had fallen ill with a new strain of SARS virus that is genetically similar to a strain found in civet cats. Dr. [Zhong] joined Hong Kong University microbiologists at a news conference here this morning to announce that they had jointly completed a detailed study of SARS-like viruses in civet cats together with a genetic analysis of viral samples taken from a 32-year-old man in Guangzhou who is suspected of having SARS. Initial research last spring had shown that the SARS virus that infected more than 8,000 people around the world was genetically very similar to a virus in civet cats. New research this winter shows that the virus in civet cats has mutated to form a new ''sublineage'' of the virus, said Dr. K.Y. Yuen, the head of the microbiology department at Hong Kong University.Dr. Yuen said that a genetic sequencing of samples from the man in Guangzhou who has SARS had found that the main ''spike'' protein was exactly identical, down to the last amino acid, to the new sublineage of the virus found in civet cats. Dr. Guan Yi, another Hong Kong University microbiologist, said that it was too soon to say whether the new sublineage was any more or less infectious or lethal in people than the SARS virus that spread last spring

Reactivated or recurrent SARS is among the theories we are considering in the case of the man, who is recuperating well in a Guangdong hospital, said Dr. Julie Hall, the SARS team leader in Beijing for the WHO. The man's illness last winter, when SARS was spreading, and the results of current tests have raised the theory of reactivated SARS. His isolated case would make even more imperative the need to determine where the SARS virus hides in nature, said Dr. Klaus Stoehr, who helped lead the WHO investigation of SARS last year. Scientists suspect that certain animals harbor the virus, but are not certain which ones