A 42-year-old man in Kolkata on Sunday tested positive for SARS taking the number of infected people in the country to seven even as pathological results of 13 more suspected cases in six states were awaited.

The textile engineer contracted SARS during a recent trip to China and a few other Southeast Asian countries between March 28 and April 14.

After returning to Kolkata, he took ill and was admitted to a private hospital. He was allowed to go home after a few days.

But he was readmitted following high fever and chest congestion. The nursing home then referred him to a specialty hospital for infectious diseases.

Surprisingly, the hospital concluded he wasn't suffering from SARS and allowed to go home after two days.

But his problems persisted forcing further hospitalisation. On Saturday, tests carried out at the Pune-based National Institute for Virology (NIV) confirmed he had SARS.

"We are taking all possible precautions," West Bengal Health Services Director Prabhakar Chatterjee told reporters in Kolkata on Sunday.

The man is under treatment at the AMRI Apollo Hospital in Kolkata. His condition is stable, health ministry officials said in Delhi on Sunday.

Reports of the tests on another 25-year-old male from Kolkata, who was being treated at the ID hospital, were awaited, they said.

According to airport sources, the patient had left for Hong Kong a fortnight ago and had returned via Dhaka on Sunday.

The N S C Bose International Airport was caught in a controversy after allowing a Bangladesh Biman flight, which brought the patient from Dhaka, was allowed to fly back without the mandatory fumigating of its cabins with anti-viral compounds.  

Blood samples of the national capital's first confirmed case, who was shifted to the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Delhi from Mumbai, has been sent for a test at National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the results are awaited, an official release in Delhi said. The first test done at the Pune-based National Institute of Virology had confirmed the disease.

Four confirmed SARS cases were reported from Pune, while Goa, Kolkata and Mumbai reported one case each, it said.

As of now there are 20 suspected cases under treatment at various hospitals in the country with seven confirmed of having the SARS virus.

The West Bengal Health Department directed all government hospitals in Kolkata to set up isolated wards with 10 beds each for suspected SARS patients.

Prabhakar Chatterjee said the Union health ministry had been requested to provide kits for testing blood samples of suspected SARS patients. "This will help us to do the tests faster instead of sending the blood samples to Pune or Delhi," he said.

Along with airports, ports have also been alerted to screen suspected SARS patients, he said.

In Pune, members of the Kumar Park Society, where ten members of a family have been kept quarantined, threatened to launch an agitation demanding that the quarantined persons be immediately shifted and the whole society be sterilised.

The panic was triggered when society members came to know Joseph Daniel Pawar, uncle of SARS patient Stanley D'Silva, also tested positive for SARS.

Pune Municipal Corporation officials, including Deputy Health officer Bhagwat, and MLA Vishwas Gangurde failed to placate the society's residents who have even threatened to evict the quarantined persons in case the PMC fails to shift them.

The release said the laboratories of the NICD and NIV had received a cumulative total of 46 samples for testing.

As many as 4836 suspected SARS cases have been reported from 26 countries while 293 have died after being infected.

On Saturday, there were reports of 19 deaths from countries such as Canada (3), China (7), Hong Kong (6), Philippines (1) and Singapore (2), it said.

With inputs from M Chhaya in Kolkata