An international panel which included experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO), had found that the victim, a Singaporean researcher, was probably infected in the laboratory of the Environmental Health Institute (EHI) where he was working.

The panel also disclosed a series of lapses in safety standards at the laboratory run by the National Environment Agency (NEA).

"As the minister for the environment, I'm held responsible," Lim said in comments monitored on local radio, adding that the NEA is part of his ministry.

"I think there is no running away in terms of responsibility." The person in charge of EHI and the chief executive of the NEA were also responsible, he said.

But Lim said that instead of finding fault, priority should be given to strengthening the EHI and the Singapore research industry to improve safety standards and prevent similar infections in the future.

The panel, which included two experts each from WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), gave recommendations for improving biosafety standards in Singapore.

One of the key recommendations was that Singapore introduce a national legislative framework for ensuring international standards in bio-safety for all its laboraties.

Two safety concerns raised were that record-keeping policies were not implemented properly and personnel training was insufficient at the laboratory.

The panel also recommended that all virus stocks in the EHI laboratory be destroyed to wipe out any threat if SARS had contaminated other specimens.

In its report, the panel found the 27-year-old male researcher had visited the government-run laboratory to work on the West Nile virus on August 23 and came down with a fever three days later.

The man has been discharged from hospital and is under home quarantine, and the 51 people who came in contact with him when he had the disease have since been cleared of having Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

The EHI is part of a global chain of laboratories that has been doing work on the SARS virus since April 14.

Although the patient reported only working on the West Nile virus, the laboratory was also doing live SARS work around that time, according to the panel.

Health officials said that Singapore was lucky to have escaped a second outbreak of SARS and were thankful that the infected researcher was not a "super-infector."

Earlier this year, three Singaporean women got the SARS virus in Hong Kong where they had gone on a shopping spree and brought it back to Singapore.

One of the women was called a "super-infector" after most of the subsequent local transmissions were traced to her.

SARS killed 33 people out of 238 infections in Singapore at the height of SARS from March to May.

A plunge in travel demand due to fears of catching the virus took a heavy toll on the economy, which contracted in the June quarter and snapped a recovery from the 2001 recession.

The global outbreak of SARS, which began late last year and was not contained until June, killed more than 900 people out of 8,000-plus infections across 32 countries.

TERRA.WIRE