New York: Scientists have confirmed that a corona virus causes the lethal new respiratory disease Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced on April 17.

While many lines of evidence indicating strong association between the virus - a member of the corona virus family never before seen in humans - and the disease emerged over the last few weeks, final confirmation came on April 15, the WHO said.

The speed at which the virus (which has killed 161 people around the world and sickened over 3,500) was identified is the result of close international collaboration between 13 laboratories in 10 countries, it said.

Dr Albert Osterhaus, the director of Virology at Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherland, completed the work to prove that the new corona virus causes the dreaded disease, the WHO said.

"The pace of SARS research has been astounding," said Dr David Heymann, executive director, WHO Communicable Diseases Programmes. "Because of an extraordinary collaboration among laboratories from countries around the world, we now know with certainty what causes SARS."

The successful identification of the corona virus means that scientists can now confidently turn to other SARS challenges. Various laboratories continue to work to unravel the genetic information of the SARS virus and compare the sequences obtained from viruses in different parts of theworld, he added.