SARS-CoV Infection in a Restaurant from Palm Civet

摘要

Epidemiologic investigations showed that 2 of 4patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)identified in the winter of 2003–2004 were a waitress at arestaurant in Guangzhou, China, that served palm civetsas food and a customer who ate in the restaurant a shortdistance from animal cages. All 6 palm civets at the restau-rant were positive for SARS-associated coronavirus(SARS-CoV). Partial spike (S) gene sequences of SARS-CoV from the 2 patients were identical to 4 of 5 S geneviral sequences from palm civets. Phylogenetic analysisshowed that SARS-CoV from palm civets in the restaurantwas most closely related to animal isolates. SARS casesat the restaurant were the result of recent interspeciestransfer from the putative palm civet reservoir, and not theresult of continued circulation of SARS-CoV in the humanpopulation