Singapore, Sept 09: Singapore health officials today confirmed that a local patient had contracted SARS and quarantined 25 persons he came into contact with, but said they believed it was a single isolated case. The discovery shattered Asia's hopes of remaining free from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and came slightly more than two months after the epidemic was declared under control worldwide on July 05.

The patient is a 27-year-old ethnic Chinese Singaporean post-graduate student who had been working on the West Nile virus at a microbiology laboratory in the National University of Singapore, the health ministry said. His name was not immediately released.

The patient had no history of travel to areas previously affected by SARS, which infected more than 8,000 people and killed over 900 victims worldwide, most of them in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

"It appears to be a single isolated case and the patient is currently isolated at the communicable disease centre," acting health minister Khaw Boon Wan told a news conference. "So investigations are ongoing to establish the source of infection." Bureau Report