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SINGAPORE, Wednesday (Reuters,AFP) Singapore this week plans to begin using a locally made three-hour diagnostic test for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the Straits Times newspaper said on Wednesday.

Developed by the government-run Genome Institute of Singapore, the test may be sensitive enough to detect the virus in its early stages before a person develops symptoms such as high fever and a dry cough, the pro-government newspaper said.

"The test has been able to pick up clearly the virus in the blood," Dr Ren Ee Chee, deputy director of the institute, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States is working to license and distribute a quick test for the virus, so doctors can tell which patients have SARS as opposed to some other form of pneumonia.

On Monday, a German company, Hamburg-based Artus GmbH, said it was distributing a quick "real-time" test that can detect the virus by looking for its genetic signature.

One more dead, 13 new cases of SARS in China One more person has died of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in China and 13 new cases have been recorded, Chinese health ministry figures showed, the World Health Organisation said Wednesday. The death was reported in southern China's Guangdong province which also recorded four new cases of SARS. Meanwhile, living under the threat of the pneumonia-like SARS, people in Hong Kong are flocking to pray for heavenly intervention to ward off the deadly virus.

Hong Kong has been one of the places worst hit by the mystery virus, which has killed 152 and infected more than 3,500 people in some 30 countries since it first emerged in southern China in November last year.

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