Return of a Killer.(SARS)

In late summer, the live-animal markets of southern China are usually buzzing with street vendors and their wares--a flurry of fur, scales and feathers, blood and gore, and the inevitable stench. This year, though, the markets are preternaturally quiet. In the Baiyun district of Guangzhou, half the 290 wild-animal stalls are shuttered. The vendors who remain have plenty of time to catnap, wash their laundry, cook for themselves and lament the long list of delicacies people rarely buy now due to SARS: tufted deer, water dragons, porcupines and crab-eating mongooses. Even the trade in legal animals has dropped off. "I'm near bankrupt," says Luo Aimin, a 56-year-old vendor who's throwing a handful of snakes into a sack. "If SARS comes back, I'm finished."

China's stern measures last winter to combat the SARS outbreak, which included a ban on the sale of 54 different live animals, has taken its toll on the poor farmers, butchers, traders and cooks who cater to the Cantonese taste for freshly killed exotic meat. It would be nice to think that Beijing's efforts have dealt the SARS virus a similar blow. But the evidence suggests otherwise. More likely, scientists say, the virus is simply lurking in civets, raccoon dogs and other animals of Guangdong waiting for colder weather to trigger another outbreak. Last week, Singapore discovered the SARS virus in a lab researcher. He's thought to be an isolated case, but health authorities in China and elsewhere are bracing themselves for another outbreak of SARS, possibly as early as November.

If SARS does make a return, China will most likely be the epicenter once again. That means China's government, and its citizens, will be at the front lines of the world's defenses. "If the disease does return, no one has more to lose than Chinese government officials," says Maria Cheng of the World Health Organization, who recently spent a month in Beijing. "They'll be the first ones to be blamed."

That's not completely reassuring, given that China's public-health sector remains underresourced, and other parts of the bureaucracy don't always sing from the same page. The government has built specialized SARS hospitals and encouraged honest reporting about the number of victims the disease claimed. Over the spring and summer, Beijing kept draconian measures in place, such as mandatory temperature checks at airports and public venues, and discharged its last two SARS patients on Aug. 16. "The Chinese government proved it could respond effectively in a short-term, heavy-handed way," says one Western expert on public- health issues in Beijing. "But whether it's learned the larger lessons remains unclear."

The government is taking steps to prepare for a fall outbreak. The Ministry of Health has ordered provinces to conduct health-emergency exercises--simulating a SARS outbreak and response--by the end of the month. Emergency- and infectious-disease centers are being built in each major city over the next two years. Last week, Beijing issued regulations for an emergency-alert system. The most urgent stage-- involving health checks at all entrances to the city--would be implemented as soon as Beijing has 30 diagnosed cases.

Beijing's authority, however, has been less effective in curtailing the animal markets where the virus is thought to have originated. When scientists last May found a SARS-like virus in civet cats ...