Mysterious virus sweeps B.C. care facility: The virus is similar enough to SARS that it registereed positive on the antibody tests for the latter, yet it caused symptoms no worse than the common cold. 143 at a residential care facility were affected, and there was no excess mortality from the virus. Although they won’t know until it can be cultured and its genome sequenced and compared to SARS, the speculation is that it is a mutant SARS virus without the virulence. Makes sense that it would cause cold-like symptoms, as the cold virus is relatively closely related to the SARS agent. The Globe and Mail