New Delhi: A new study has heightened fears that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) could hit back this winter. The pool of animals harbouring the lethal virus may be bigger than first realised, researchers warn.

SARS is thought to have jumped to humans in the live-animal marketplaces of Guangdong, China, last year. It raced round the world, claiming more than 770 lives, before public-health officials stamped it out.

Now teams in the Netherlands and Hong Kong have found that the SARS virus, which is a new type of coronavirus, infects domestic cats and ferrets, even though the two species are distantly related. It also scuttles into healthy animals from sick ones, the scientists report in the journal "Nature".

The SARS virus' promiscuity implies that it may be lurking in many wild or domestic animals and might readily jump into humans again. It will also make the source of an outbreak more difficult to track and contain.

"It could be much, much harder than we thought," the report said quoting an official with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland.

PTI