But Dr. Larry Ludwick, the director of infectious diseases at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, questioned how new hantavirus is.

Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of infectious diseases at Harlem Hospital, said an effort must be made to bring trials to community hospitals and clinics.

Her father is the director of the division of statistical genetics at the Mailman School of Public Health and studies the genetics of common diseases.

Dr. Regina Rabinovich, the foundation's director of infectious diseases, said she was struck some years back that each disease had its own champions operating largely in isolation from one another.

Dr. David L. Heymann, executive director of communicable diseases at the W.H.O., said it is too soon to know whether the disease is seasonal.

That ratio is likely to be typical of several Newark hospitals, said Dr. Edward Connor, University Hospital's associate director of infectious diseases, who did the studies.

"I think it will have tremendous significance and will enable studies in many important directions," said Dr. Martin Blaser, director of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University.

In 1963 he was acting director of infectious diseases in the World Health Organization.

Dr. Hira Nakhasi, director of transfusion-transmitted diseases at the F.D.A., agreed that neither the blood banks nor his agency had been very aggressive.

"Generally the mandates have been enacted over years," said Dr. Janet R. Gilsdorf, the director of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Michigan.