The head of China's main disease-research agency has resigned to take responsibility for an outbreak of SARS this year that started at one of his agency's laboratories and killed one person, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

　　Li liming "has resigned for mismanagement" as head of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention following the outbreak originating at one of the center's labs in April, Xinhua reported.

　　"Poor management of the virus triggered the SARS outbreak ... The SARS recurrence has been determined as a case of major accident due to negligence," the report said. Nine people, including two lab workers were infected, and the 53-year-old mother of one died. The last patient was declared recovered in May.

　　Four other employees of the center were also disciplined, Xinhua said, without giving details.

　　However, a spokeswoman at the center's Beijing's headquarters said all five officials had resigned. The woman, who gave only her surname, Zhou, said the punishments had been decided by the Health Ministry and referred questions about the outbreak to it.

　　In it's brief report, Xinhua said the five center officials "did not appropriately manage the SARS virus and have major leadership responsibility."

　　It said an investigation had isolated the source of the outbreak to a lab at the center's institute of virology in Beijing where a 26-year-old intern identified only by her surname, Song, contracted the virus in March. She then traveled to her home in Anhui Province in eastern China, where the virus spread to her mother and others.

　　Hundreds of people who had contact with the patients were placed in isolation under medical observation.

　　The incident awakened fears of a replay of last year's major outbreak, which killed 349 people across China's mainland, virtually halting domestic travel and battering the economy.

　　Li trained at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and was the founding director of the Chinese center, which was created in 2002 and modeled on the US agency by the same name.

　　Sars emerged from southern China's Guangdong Province late in 2002 and spread worldwide, killing 774 people and sickening more than 8,000 before abating in July 2003.

　　(The Associated Press)