SEREMBAN. Malaysia. Apr 3: As dusk falls, a dozen housewives keep a silent vigil along the third-floor corridor of a state hospital where dozens of pig farmers are afflicted with a mysterious killer virus, reports AP.

"I'm waiting for his eyes to open." said R Tailemilaarsi, 35, who's been here since her husband fell into coma a week ago. 'The doctors say the virus has gone to his brain and it won't go away."

Two weeks have lapsed since health authorities detected a new virus which caused most of the recent deaths in an epidemic that has killed 85 people. No one's sure how it spreads. And the virus shows no signs of going away.

"When the outbreak first started, it appeared under control. But now everything is different." said Dr Abdul Rahman, an outbreak specialist from the Malaysia's Ministry of Health.

"We know very little about this new virus. We don't know how it's transmitted. The CDC experts are working on it." he told The Associated Press.

Scientists flown in from the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that many of the dead

suffered from a Hendra-like virus, which they fear is transmitted by direct contact with infected pigs.

Little is known about the Hendra virus, which was first detected in Australia, where it killed racehorses and three humans in 1994.

To help curb the epidemic, Malaysia has said it would destroy 1 million pigs, three times the initial number planned for. Soldiers dressed like astronauts have swept through the once-prosperous pig farming district of Bukit Pelandok and killed around 270.000 hogs so far.

When the outbreak first wreaked havoc in Malaysia months ago. health officials believed it was caused by Japanese encephalitis, which infects pigs and can be transmitted to humans through the bite of the Culex mosquito. But so far. only 18 of the deaths have been traced to the disease.

Both Hendra and Japanese encephalitis can cause inflammation of the brain, resulting in high fever, aches, eventual coma and death.

Pig farmers who’ve been spared the disease are facing other shocks. Their villages have been sealed off by police. Pork prices have plunged,

abattoirs closed and farms left abandoned.

A few pig farmers, desperate to recoup losses, have turned to stuffing live hogs in the trunks of their cars to avoid getting stopped at police road blocks. Illegal slaughter houses have sprung up.

State authorities in northern Malaysia are also studying how to deep-freeze pork so it can be sold when prices are restored. Even farmers in unaffected areas who used to sell 1,100 pigs daily were now selling between 300 and 400.

But pig breeder Tah Ep Pau, 35, isn't bothered by the slew of bad news.

"I'm lucky to be alive." said Tah. who's recovering from the virus which struck him 10 days ago. Seven hundred pigs on his farm had to be destroyed.

"Every family I knew had at least two members who came down with JE. My friend,.his wife and child all died," he said, before shuffling off to chat with fellow villagers recovering in Ward 3A. "Its fated, that's what it is."

Opposition leader in Parliament Lim Kit Slang disagrees. He says the national emergency was clearly precipi-tated by the government.