A worried father fears Bermuda is not taking seriously a pneumonia-type virus which has killed 63 people worldwide.

Immigration and King Edward Memorial VII Hospital (KEMH) now grill people likely to have been exposed to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which has swept through Asia and has now spread west.

But Chris Morris said he was horrified to be told by there was no local test which could be made when his two-year-old son Sam showed symptoms of the disease.

Sam was rushed to King Edward Memorial Hospital on Saturday after he began throwing up after banging his head.

Antibiotics were given in case it was pneumonia but an X-ray was not conclusive said Mr. Morris. A new X-ray on Sunday confirmed Sam had quite serious pneumonia in his left lung and traces of pneumonia in right lung.

When Mr. Morris challenged the nurse about the blood test results he was told the hospital was unable to test for SARS.

Mr. Morris said he was surprised the hospital was so relaxed about it.

"My wife is Vietnamese and my son looks Asian so here you have an Asian boy exposed to people in the emergency ward and put in a ward next to a six-month-old child.

"The emergency staff were not wearing masks, clothes, gloves, the whole bit."

He said the nurse looked shocked and went white when he pointed out the situation.

Although he had been asked if his son had been abroad or been in contact with anyone from abroad, he had no clue who Sam mixed with at his nursery.

He said Bermuda had a flight daily from Toronto, where the disease had surfaced and prompted a province-wide health emergency.

"We are not prepared," said Mr. Morris.

"Everyone there could have got sick including the hospital staff and then you have to shut down the hospital and then what do you do?

"I don't care what the tests cost because the alternative is very much more expensive.

"They say they scan people coming through Toronto. If the hospital doesn't have a test what is the screening process? It's a list of questions and you rely on the correct answers.

"I am not attacking the doctors and nurses.

"As far as I am concerned they saved my son's life. That isn't it. It is up to the top people. They need to get their fingers out and do something about it."

Last night KEMH Infection Control Practitioner Linda Rothwell said the Centre for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation were still trying to identify the organism which causes the disease.

She said the hospital could collect samples which had to be sent away for analysis but she denied there was a test for SARS. She said the Centre for Disease Control scientists were beginning to identify a common factor.

Although she did not know anything about the details of the Morris case she said the hospital had guidelines for identifying a suspected case.

These included a temperature of 100.5 (38 degrees centigrade), breathing difficulties and close contact with someone with a person with a respiratory illness who travelled to a SARS area or who was known to be a suspected SARS case.

Asked how anyone could prove whether or not they had been in contact with a SARS case, she said: "You don't really know."

She stressed that it meant direct contact with respiratory secretions or body fluids.

"It's very, very close contact. Not casual contact."

She said patients suspected of having the disease would be given masks to wear, be quizzed about their travel history in the past two weeks and asked if they had close contact with SARS suspects.

Those who were still suspected would be isolated.

However Mr. Morris said, under these guidelines simply being sneezed on could put someone at risk. He said his son was always picking up colds and diseases from other children.

Ms. Rothwell agreed that sneezing could spread the disease.

SARS deaths have occurred in the far east and Canada and infected almost 1,900 people in at least a dozen countries.

The World Health Organisation has confirmed SARS cases in the United States, Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore while Canada has reported more than 120 cases of infection, with two more deaths reported yesterday.

Hong Kong found 75 new SARS cases yesterday and its government said it was placing more than 200 people into isolation camps.