Medical researchers around the world were desperately trying on Tuesday to identify a mysterious respiratory disease which has left at least nine people dead and sparked a global medical alert.
As airlines stepped-up surveillance of passengers in a bid to curb the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) put laboratories in 10 countries on the case.
At least four deaths — two in Canada, one in Hong Kong and one in Vietnam — have been attributed to the disease, which has been described as an atypical pneumonia or influenza-like illness.
Besides the four confirmed deaths, health officials also strongly suspect SARS was behind five deaths last month in China’s southern Guangdong province, where the disease may have originated in November and peaked in February.
A total of 305 people were infected in Guangdong while there have been some 200 confirmed or suspected cases of SARS in the latest outbreak, according to a toll compiled by AFP from WHO figures and local sources.
China said Tuesday the outbreak in Guangdong had been basically controlled. ”The related reports put out by the Ministry of Health and the concerned departments in Guangdong said the atypical pneumonia that first appeared in Guangdong in November last year has been
basically controlled,” Chinese foreign ministry representative Kong Quan told journalists. Cases or suspected cases have been reported in nearly a dozen
countries with Hong Kong (111), Vietnam (51) and Singapore (23) among the worst affected.
No cases have been reported in the United States but the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) has heightened surveillance, preparing health alert cards to be given at airports to travelers returning from Southeast Asia.
Eight CDC scientists have been deployed to assist the WHO ”to understand the cause of this illness and how to prevent its spread,” said CDC director Julie Gerberding.
They will assist 11 laboratories in 10 countries mobilised by the WHO in a global detective effort aimed at identifying the cause of the disease, which has been described as atypical pneumonia and may be a previously unknown virus or a new strain of influenza.
”These are the world’s best laboratories working together to see if they can find a diagnosis for this disease,” said David Heymann, WHO’s executive director for communicable diseases.
In Singapore, Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang said on Tuesday that the outbreak in the city-state was under control, although he appealed to Singaporeans not to visit Hong Kong, Hanoi or Guangdong province for the moment.
”The situation is under control,” he said. ”There is no reason to panic because we have contained the situation.”
In Australia, health authorities said on Tuesday they were monitoring 20 people with possible cases of the disease. ”Nationwide there are currently about 20 people under investigation” with suspected cases of SARS, a government spokesman
said.
He said most of the possible cases were in Victoria and New South Wales states. Doctors said one Sydney businessman appears to have been the first confirmed case in the country, but he is already recovering.
Some of the 20 patients were ”seriously ill” and a number had been admitted to hospital isolation wards, he said. Others were only mildly ill and did not require hospitalisation. Medical officials in Austria, Britain and Israel reported a single case each, all among travellers recently returned from China or Hong Kong.
Symptoms of the disease include high fever and respiratory problems such as shortness of breath and coughing. The WHO has stressed that the disease is spread ”only through close contact with a case” and noted that health workers and close relatives have been among the worst-affected in both Hong Kong and
Vietnam.
In Hong Kong, health authorities set up a telephone hotline to provide advice about the disease to a worried public and sought to downplay fears it had spread to the general community beyond the hospital isolation wards.
Airlines and airports meanwhile have begun to screen passengers or crew with symptoms of SARS in a bid to prevent the disease from spreading.
The WHO warned on Monday that the ”speed of international travel creates a risk of rapid spread (of the disease) to additional areas” but that there was ”no current justification for any restriction in travel or trade.” – Sapa-AFP