"The case has been confirmed," Feng Shaoming, spokesman for the Guangdong Center for Disease Control, told AFP. "Our experts at the Center for Disease Control have made many tests and they are all positive."

Three experts from the WHO were in the provincial capital of Guangzhou Tuesday and were going over the test results, Feng said.

He acknowledged that the case would not be officially upgraded to a confirmed case until the Ministry of Health made a formal announcement, which he expected to be forthcoming.

"So far the Ministry of Health has not announced it, nor has the World Health Organization (WHO). I don't know when they will, it is up to them, but our experts here have confirmed it."

Wang Maowu, director of disease control at the national-level Chinese Centre for Disease Control, told AFP an official statement was likely to be issued Wednesday.

"Our work still needs to be done," Wang said.

Roy Wadia, WHO's Beijing-based spokesman said that no official confirmation of the case had come out of the Ministry of Health and that the WHO was trying to contact their ministry counterparts.

"We are trying to get confirmation with the Ministry of Health, we are also trying to contact our team in Guangzhou to get clarification," Wadia said.

"So far we have no official word ourselves."

China's health ministry announced Saturday the discovery of a suspected SARS case in a 32-year-old man in the Guangdong provincial capital of Guangzhou, near where the virus was first detected in Foshan city on November 16 last year.

Panyu city, where the freelance journalist, identified only as Luo, comes from is barely 40 kilometres (24.8 miles) from Foshan.

Scientists suspect the SARS epidemic may have originated from wild animals sold for food in Guangdong's markets.

Luo developed a fever on December 16 and was hospitalized with pneumonia in the right lung on December 20.

While both Singapore and Taiwan have reported SARS cases since the epidemic petered out in July, they were traced to laboratories where research had been conducted on the virus rather that to the general population.

On Tuesday, the WHO team in Guangzhou met with the patient, Hong Kong radio reported.

After the meeting, WHO expert Augusto Pinto told reporters they would be carrying out detailed investigations on test results.

He estimated that it would take several days to review the data and after that they would decide whether further investigation was necessary.

According to Tang Xiaoping, president of the Guangzhou No. 8 People's Hospital, Luo has had no fever for five days and could be released from the hospital within 10 days, the China Daily reported.

SARS symptoms are similar to other respiratory diseases with the onset of the disease only fully confirmed after a battery of tests are taken, including tests for SARS antibodies in the patient.

No vaccine is yet available.

China has issued health notices that include five-levels of SARS diagnoses among which are suspected cases, clinically confirmed cases and confirmed cases.

In the initial outbreak in late 2002 and early this year suspected SARS cases were routinely hospitalized and treated as full blown cases due the absence of a timely test for the disease, medical officials told AFP.

In retrosepct, an untold number of people contracted SARS after being hospitalized with other SARS patients, while in Taiwan nearly 100 fatalities first attributed to SARS were later rediagnosed as non-SARS related.

"We are more than six months on from back then and we know a lot more about detection, diagnosis, isolation and treatment," Wadia said.

China was the country worst affected by the SARS epidemic, infecting 5,327 people nationwide and killing 349.

The disease spilled into neighboring Hong Kong where 299 died as it spread globally, killing about 800 people and infecting more than 8,000.

TERRA.WIRE