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Empresas y finanzas

Russia says SARS did not kill Chinese woman


    MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Chinese women who suddenly died on a Russian train this week in the country's Far East was not struck down by the SARS virus, Interfax news agency quoted a top Russian health official as saying on Friday.

    Russian health authorities have quarantined 53 people from the same train while they investigate the cause of the illness after the woman died on the way to Moscow from the city of Blagoveshchensk on the border with China.

    On Thursday Radio Television Hong Kong sent alarm bells through the health community when it reported the woman may have died from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, a contagious disease that spread worldwide and killed at least 774 people in 2002 and 2003.

    Preliminary test results using material from the woman's lungs, intestines and brain showed no trace of SARS or other dangerous viruses, said Gennady Onishchenko, Russia's chief public health official.

    "Investigations are continuing," he said, adding that more data would be available later on Friday.

    (Reporting by James Kilner)