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04/16/2003 Archived Entry: "SARS OUTBREAK SCARY! Totonto Worries."
According to HELEN BRANSWELL of the Canadian Press "Toronto's SARS outbreak may be on verge of breaking out of control". Her story states:
"TORONTO (CP) - The SARS outbreak that has crippled Toronto's health-care system may be on the verge of breaking out, in an uncontrolled fashion, into the community at large, infectious disease experts warned Wednesday.
While public health officials leading the fight against SARS warned only that the battle has reached a critical stage, the doctors who advise them were ready to spell out the threat in more graphic and frightening terms. The disease has travelled so far from the original cluster of infection - one expert estimates the city is on the fifth generation of cases - that the risk is mounting daily that people will go undiagnosed and will spread SARS in the community, sparking what are called sporadic cases that experts can't trace."
...
"One only need look to Hong Kong to get a mental picture of what an out-of-control SARS outbreak looks like. Governments around the world have urged their citizens not to travel to Hong Kong and tourism has plummeted. Shopping malls are empty. Hospitals are paralysed because so many health-care workers are sick. "
PRETTY SCARY .... but "On the bright side, a total of 91 SARS patients have been discharged from Ontario hospitals"
According to an article appearing in New England Journal of Medicine "a novel coronavirus was isolated from patients who met the case definition of SARS. Cytopathological features were noted microscopically in Vero E6 cells inoculated with a throat-swab specimen. Electron-microscopical examination of cultures revealed ultrastructural features characteristic of coronaviruses. Immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence staining revealed reactivity with group I coronavirus polyclonal antibodies. Consensus coronavirus primers designed to amplify a fragment of the polymerase gene by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were used to obtain a sequence that clearly identified the isolate as a unique coronavirus only distantly related to previously sequenced coronaviruses. With specific diagnostic RT-PCR primers we identified several identical nucleotide sequences in 12 patients from several locations, a finding consistent with a point source outbreak. Indirect fluorescent antibody tests and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays made with the new coronavirus isolate have been used to demonstrate a virus-specific serologic response. Preliminary studies suggest that this virus may never before have infected the U.S. population.
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According to WHO (World Health Organization) Coronavirus never before seen in humans is the cause of SARS:
"GENEVA -- Today, the World Health Organization announced that a new pathogen, a member of the coronavirus family never before seen in humans, is the cause of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The speed at which this virus was identified is the result of the close international collaboration of 13 laboratories from 10 countries. While many lines of evidence have found strong associations between this virus and the disease over the last weeks, final confirmation came today. ... Today, the first part of the mission of our network has been fulfilled, as researchers have both detected a hitherto unknown virus and established it as the cause of SARS. The new coronavirus has been named by WHO and member laboratories as “SARS virus, ” said Dr Albert Osterhaus, the Director of Virology at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. Erasmus completed the work to definitely prove that the new coronavirus causes SARS."
Dr Klaus Stöhr, WHO virologist is the coordinator of the collaborative research network.
Dr Carlo Urbani, the WHO scientist first alerted the world to the existence of SARS in Hanoi, Vietnam, died from the disease in Bangkok on 29 March 2003.
We all need to thank the WHO network for their dedication and wish them allspeed in their efforts to develop a vaccine.
Background on Coronavirus can be found here