The Health Ministry today said it was "unlikely" that the recent death of a sailor with Sars symptoms was linked to the killer epidemic, but that more than 200 people remained under quarantine as a "precautionary measure".

"He is labelled as non-Sars at the moment but we need to wait for the results of further tests to determine whether it is a Sars death or not," the ministry deputy director-general Dr Mohd Ismail Merican told reporters.