Sars, the virus that has caused panic across the globe, is deadlier than was first thought, British experts will reveal this week. But predictions that it will kill millions of people are unlikely to come true.
The disease apparently kills one in 10 of its victims, more than twice the mortality rate suggested by the World Health Organisation. It is less contagious, however, than was feared, says a study of the Hong Kong outbreak by Professor Roy Anderson, a top epidemiologist.
His verdict came amid reports that a group of children recently back from Hong Kong were forced to leave a Blackpool hotel by ‘abusive’ fellow guests worried about infection, while a retailer of surgical masks said it had thousands of inquiries from panicking Britons.
However, the UK Health Protection Agency said this weekend that there may have been no genuine cases of Sars in this country at all.
The six ‘probable’ British cases all had pneumonia-like symptoms and been in contact with infected areas, but none of them seemed to have had contact with people definitely known to be infected, said the agency’s head of respiratory diseases, John Watson.
‘Most of those six cases are probably not even Sars cases at all: most will probably be discarded in the end,’ he said. ‘It’s not unlikely that there would be one or two that will turn out to be true Sars, but we don’t yet know.’
‘If we don’t see it here for another week, that is probably it,’ said Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading. It was possible, however, that new cases could still emerge as people who did not know they were infected entered this country.
Vivienne Nathanson, head of ethics at the British Medical Association, said Sars was not the global pandemic feared at first, but she called for a review to clarify the law governing infectious diseases. She urged airlines to give passengers leaflets explaining the symptoms.
Vietnam too appears to be getting on top of the bug, while the rate of new cases in Hong Kong appears to be slowing. Kuwait, which has remained Sars-free, yesterday banned all travellers from infected countries.
Anderson said his study of 1 400 cases suggested ‘gloom and doom’ forecasts of the spread of Sars could be exaggerated.
‘It has been effectively contained in most of the developed countries in the world with a very limited number of cases,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘The concerns really lie in the large populous regions of the world, China and Indonesia, where the disease reporting systems are to some extent limited. It is much less clear what is going on there.’
The virus appears to remain infectious longer than most, however, he added, and doctors had ‘a long way to go’ to improve its clinical managements. It has exposed the limitations of the world’s antiviral armoury, with no cocktail of drugs so far totally effective.
The WHO said it accepted that Anderson’s findings were ‘likely to be as close as possible to accurate’.
Attention will now shift to helping struggling countries tackle the virus. The speed with which the outbreak criss-crossed the globe demonstrates that no country is safe until it is under control worldwide.
There were particular concerns over Ireland’s handling of the crisis, as its doctors voted yesterday to intensify a strike by public health specialists.
Last week it emerged a Chinese woman showing Sars symptoms had been turned away from a hospital in Dublin. Doctors gave her a face mask and told her to return to her hostel. She is now listed as a probable case and her fellow hostel residents are in quarantine.
Sars has now killed at least 293 of the more than 4 600 people infected worldwide. Heads of government from South East Asia, China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea are to hold an emergency summit in Bangkok on Tuesday to decide how to tackle the disease.
Yesterday their Health Ministers approved a plan to boost screening at international departure points, to bar travellers with Sars symptoms, and require written declarations of good health from travellers from the affected countries.
Philippines President Gloria Arroyo said she wants the entire region to adopt strict measures like those in Singapore, which jails people who break out of quarantine for up to six months and punishes those who fear they are infected yet go onmixing with others.
China’s Health Minister was dismissed yesterday following reports that his country’s death toll was covered up in the initial stages. – Unlimited Â