Beijing, April 25 (PTI): Concerned by the spurt in Sars cases, the World Health Organisation today decided to send a team of experts to China to help it fight the deadly disease, which appears to have infected four more people in the last 24 hours.

“WHO will send an expert team to China to assist its health ministry investigate the cause of Sars cases reported recently,” WHO spokesperson based in China, Bob Dietz, said.

WHO will send a team of two or three experts in laboratory bio-safety to China to investigate possible links between the Institute of Virology in Beijing and the Sars cases reported recently in the country, he said.

The team will arrive in China within a few days, he said adding that since April 22, it has reported two confirmed and six suspected Sars cases in east Anhui province and Beijing.

With two persons working in the laboratory at the Institute of Virology testing positive, the experts feel the infection may have spread from the laboratory.

The laboratory was sealed on Friday after one person from Anhui tested positive while another from Beijing was suspected to be infected by the virus.

Dietz said he does not see the disease as a “significant” threat to public health in China. However, he said the situation could change if the Sars coronavirus was transmitted through contact, including sharing a taxi or from a waitress at a restaurant.

The Chinese health ministry earlier said every new case reported has been traced to a single patient.

The ministry said the four suspected Sars patients had close contact with Li, a nurse who was diagnosed with the deadly disease. The persons who contracted the disease include Li’s parents, aunt and a female patient surnamed Xu who once lived in the same ward with Li.

According to the ministry, the 337 people who came in contact with the patients have been put under medical observation in Beijing.