Twenty-five wedding guests are in quarantine in western India after a bride infected with the SARS virus insisted on getting married in a church despite pleas from doctors, officials said.
The bride - whose mother and brother also tested positive for the flu-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which has killed 225 people worldwide - wed yesterday under the gaze of government doctors in the church in Pune, 165 100 miles southeast of Bombay.
After the ceremony, the bride was rushed to hospital to join her brother and mother who were already in an isolation unit. The 25 guests, who included four children, were quarantined in separate apartments.
"This should have not happened. I was shocked," Maharashtra state Health Minister Digvijay Khanvilkar told journalists, adding the couple had rejected appeals from medical officials to delay the wedding.
Doctors believe her brother, who arrived in India from Indonesia this month, infected the bride. The three family members are all doing well in hospital, doctors said.
The groom and the priest who conducted the ring-exchange ceremony have been asked to stay in isolation in their homes.
The bride, mother and brother brought to four the number of SARS cases in India. Last week, doctors in the western resort state of Goa reported the first case in an engineer who visited Hong Kong and Singapore.
Some doctors have expressed fears SARS could reach epidemic proportions in India - the world's second most populous nation with more than a billion people - due its congested cities, overstretched health system and reported lax airport screening.