Where did SARS come from?
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is a new disease. It is felt to be caused by a new member of Coronavirus family (several members of this group can cause more mild, cold like illnesses in humans). The virus is felt to have most likely originated in China, sometime in the fall – possibly “jumping” from animals to humans. For a number of months, the infection spread, largely unnoticed by the outside world, in parts of China (especially around the Guandong province).
The disease was first identified by Dr Carlo Urbani, an infectious diseases specialist for the World Health Organisation who directed public health programs in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Based in Hanoi, the 46-year-old Italian epidemiologist was called in after a visiting Chinese-American businessman, Johnny Cheng, became gravely ill and Vietnamese doctors were mystified by the disease. Urbani visited the man at the French Hospital in Hanoi on 26 February 2003 and, over the next week, took many samples. The disease looked like pneumonia – an acute disease marked by inflammation of the lungs and usually caused by bacteria, viruses or occasionally by chemical irritants. But the 48-year-old patient also had a high fever, cough, shortness of breath and other symptoms that suggested something else. Despite intensive care, Cheng eventually died – but not before he had infected 33 hospital staff and Urbani himself, who finally succumbed to the respiratory disease a month later. All of Vietna
Scientists suspect that SARS originated in China’s Guangdong province, where the highest concentration of SARS cases continues to occur. However, efforts are still underway to determine whether the outbreak of atypical pneumonia that began there in November 2002 is linked to other cases of SARS worldwide. The first widely reported case of SARS involved the death of an American businessman who died March 16 after traveling to China and Vietnam. What Causes SARS? On April 16, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that SARS is caused by a new virus, called a “coronavirus,” previously not found in humans. Scientists at the University of Hong Kong are seeking to determine whether this virus is a mutated form of a similar virus found amongst poultry and swine. How Many People Have Been Affected? According to WHO, as of April 17, 2003, 3,389 cases of SARS have been reported worldwide. Approximately five per cent of those cases have been fatal, with 165 people succumbing to the disease
