Sars.....Q&A

[Tankus]

Trontos (Can) mayor was jumping up and down on the news today because WHO (World Health Organisation..Geneva) has stated that Canada's economic centre is a place to avoid(305 cases 15 deaths).Along with many Chinese provinces and Hong Kong....

MSBN news...

Q: How is SARS spread?

    A: The primary way appears to be close person-to-person contact. Most cases have involved people who cared for, lived with or had close contact with a SARS victim.

    Touching the skin of a SARS victim, or even the droplets from a cough or sneeze, and then touching your eyes, nose, or mouth can transmit the virus. The CDC says it’s also possible that SARS can be spread more broadly through the air or by other ways that are currently not known.

    In Toronto, Canada, where 15 people have died, hospital staff in SARS wards are now wearing double gloves and full face shields as concerns grow that the protective gear used previously did not guard them sufficiently.     

    Q: How long is a person with SARS infectious?

    A: Information to date suggests that people are most likely to be infectious when they have symptoms, such as fever or cough. It is not known if a person is infectious before symptoms show up. 

      How long, or even whether, a person is infectious after symptoms have cleared up is also not known. But studies by Hong Kong researchers showed the SARS virus can survive for at least 24 hours on a surface coughed on or touched by a victim, longer than the three hours some had previously thought.

   

    Q: What are SARS symptoms and signs?

    A: It usually begins with a fever greater than 100.4°F. That is sometimes associated with chills, headache, general feeling of discomfort and/or body aches. Some people also experience mild respiratory symptoms at the outset.

    After two to seven days, SARS patients might develop a dry cough that increases in severity. Significant lung congestion and a lack of oxygen to one’s blood can follow. 

 

        Q: If I were exposed to SARS, how long would it take for me to become sick?

    A: The incubation period is typically two to seven days, but isolated reports have suggested a period as long as 10 days.

   

    Q: What’s the mortality rate for SARS?

    A: About 3 percent, which is much lower than other infectious diseases.

   

    Q: What’s the treatment for SARS?

    A: There is still no cure, so for now suspected carriers are confined to special hospital wards. Some patients have responded well to antiviral medications and steroids. On April 4, President Bush signed an executive order authorizing the quarantine of anyone in the United States suspected of carrying SARS.

   

    Q: What causes SARS?

    A: Scientists have detected in SARS patients a previously unrecognized coronavirus, which is a type of virus with a halo or crown-like appearance when viewed under a microscope. 

Is our government doing enough.....?

[Guest Nellie2]

Are they doing anything?? What are they doing?

[Tankus]

A: The primary way appears to be close person-to-person contact. Most cases have involved people who cared for, lived with or had close contact with a SARS victim.

      Touching the skin of a SARS victim, or even the droplets from a cough or sneeze, and then touching your eyes, nose, or mouth can transmit the virus. The CDC says it’s also possible that SARS can be spread more broadly through the air or by other ways that are currently not known.

One carrier in a London rush hour on the tube...........?

3~5% death rate........depending on level of medicare....

Efforts to contain SARS in Ontario suffered serious setbacks over the weekend, worried public health officials revealed yesterday, after a nurse infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome twice rode the GO train between Appleby station in Burlington and Toronto — possibly infecting six others sitting nearby.

A doctor on the news said something interesting on the news tonight..."all the scare stories we heard about AIDS in the early 80,s..(Toilet seats ,cups ,knives and forks , door handles, ..They are true for SARS"

Good link The Guardian (requires flash)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,942071,00.html

[Tankus]

Sum response from the government ..."Avoid listed areas if you can, If you have been to such a place and have the symptoms,contact your local GP"

I feel safer already....now I know that Tonys on the job..................

[Guest Nellie2]

very scarey stats Tankus.......it would spread like wildfire before we knew it.......doesn't bear thinking about. Except you can't afford not to!

[Tankus]

Should passengers coming from Canada and China be medically vetted at our airports.....?

[Guest ellas]

yes

[Tankus]

Due to rumours...Chinatown's (London west end) retail sales have halved in the last week...Its affects have already reached us even if the disease hasnt...( apart form one or two isolated cases .)

[andsome]

I think that there is more to this SARS virus than we have been told. Every year there are numerous epidemics which can kill, such as measles, diptheria, cholera, influenza etc. These usually kill thousands of people, yet they get scarcely a mention. The SARS virus has only infected a couple of thousand people out of several billion in the world, and has only killed a few hundred, and yet it seems to have provoked near panic in governments and the medical establishment. WHAT HAVEN'T WE BEEN TOLD? What is so nastie about this particular virus that has provoked this near panic, when it is still so rare? Why are we not getting the full story from the W.H.O.?

[Prince of Calcutta]

well there was talk about it being chemically engineered...

[ranger]

What is so nastie about this particular virus that has provoked this near panic,

some of the stuff I have been reading makes me think it could be,

we don't have a cure for it

it will be a hard job to find a cure for it, as it seems to mutate and have different strains for different people and no DNA pattern

unlike Aids, which overall, has a generally slow infectious rate, it could be a fast spreading disease that you can pick up from using a eating/drinking utensil, toilet seat, coming into contact with someone who has it ie: all the things they said you could get Aids with but can't, you can with SARS.

A lot of the diseases you mention do more killing in third world/poorer countries and so not to much is publicized, SARS, going by some of the stuff I have been hearing and I suppose Toronto proves it, could hit the West pretty badly

Or maybe it's not so bad as they make out but it has caught the world press imagination and Governments have to be seen to be doing something about it because of all the publicity

[mark2]

Brings to mind the book by Stephen King The Stand can't be that bad can it?

[andsome]

ranger

The point is that OTHER diseases, notably influenza mutate, and also we have no cure for these. Influenza mutations have in the past wiped out MILLIONS in a very few months and they spread at an alarming rate, into ALL parts of the world, including the west. The thing that bothers me about SARS, is that the authorities claim on one hand that it is more difficult to pass on than some other infectious diseases, and that we should not worry unduly, and on the other hand appear to be panicking. I don't think that we have the full story. If you think about it there have been several SO CALLED experts on television telling us that each individuals chances of catching the disease are remote, but at the same time whole communities are being put into quarantine.

[Tankus]

............................some pictures of the virus...................

http://www.sciencephoto.com/search/searchL...ollectionid=158

[Guest Nellie2]

Topics merged!! :)

[Tankus]

Influenza killed millions after the first world war.......The reason for its rapid spread was the mass global transit of people returning home after the war, this was the first time that this had happened on such a massive scale . No nation remained isloated.......(the mortality rate of SARS is lower,but has the potential of spreading further)

Mass global migration is now common place..(Its not only humans that can now go on package holidays, viruses can to)...and the fact that the disease can be transmitted in an aerosol (sneeze /cough droplets) with a 7/10 day incubation period is WHO's major concern.(There has also been cases of rodent /insect vectors (*beep*roaches) in Hong Kong.)

Our only defence against it is isolation....vaccines normally take years to develop and test before becoming commercially available (this will be fast tracked though).....Mutation my also pose problems ,The Canadian strain is already sufficiently different from the Chinese's original as it may require a different vaccine.....

The other worry for WHO that its is not only the usual victims that are dying in that 5% (Very young ,very old, pregnant women ,and people with suppressed immune systems).there have been instances of fit 20/30 years old falling victims.Indicating there may be some other susceptibility not yet understood.

But the main concern that appears to be the overriding concern of the Governments (witness Toronto's mayors response) is its effect of the economy's of the infected areas.........

The fear and panic caused by one or two cases in an area will have an immediate effect on the local businesses............London's China town retail turnover has been halved , yet there has not been a single

case there yet..!

Witness a number of Air companies are going to the wall (US /Greek/Spanish/Romanian national carriers)

Due to the Gulf war..SARS could be the final nail.......

Its the economic considerations that are guiding our governments response ...Not medical ones..If its spread is contained , then maybe its the right one ?

[Tankus]

Looks like its not just Londons China town.

Taken from the abc news(USA) site

SARS, the flu-like illness that has killed more than 200 people in China and Hong Kong, has yet to claim a life in California. But it has deflated the economic life in one of the state's thriving Asian communities.

When a false alarm about the disease flashed through the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles early this month, markets and restaurants emptied.

By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost, and the businesses are only now beginning to recover.

Robert Lee, owner of Ocean Star Restaurant in Monterey Park, said he lost $70,000 in business after rumors that some restaurants' workers had the illness.

"The people didn't come for lunch. No lunch, no dinner," he said.

Public health officials say the fear is disproportionate to the actual threat. California has had only 17 probable SARS cases, four or five of them in Los Angeles County, and no one in the United States has died of the disease. Nine out of 10 people who catch it recover.

"You're much more likely to be killed by some drunk driver on your way home or from complications of influenza, which kills 15,000 to 20,000 people a year in the U.S., than by SARS," said Jonathan Fielding, director of public health for Los Angeles County.

But SARS worries have hit home in a place with close ties to Hong Kong and China, where the previously unrecognized virus first appeared and has sickened more than 4,000 people since November.

But from CNN

Officials in the former British colony of Hong Kong -- the hardest-hit area along with China -- on Thursday revised the death rate from SARS to 7.2 percent from 5 percent.

Some experts say it could rise higher because the rate is calculated by including those patients that are still in hospital and may yet still die.

While 567 people out of 1,488 have recovered in this territory of 6.7 million people, 108 are still in intensive care. Hong Kong reported four more deaths on Thursday, bringing its toll to 109.

Beyond Hong Kong, officials have been unable to explain why the global mortality rate has crept up to 5.9 percent from less than 4 percent three weeks ago.

One suggestion is the coronavirus that causes the disease could have mutated into a more virulent form, but Dr. Julie Hall from the WHO said there was no evidence this has happened.

In the past week people in their 30s and 40s with no history of illness have been dying from SARS in Hong Kong. Doctors are treating patients with a *beep*tail of antivirals and steriods, but as yet there is no cure.

[andsome]

WE HAVE STILL NOT BEEN GIVEN THE FULL STORY ON THIS DISEASE. Why all the scares, when the number of cases is minute as a proportion of the world population. Even Lassa fever and other African diseases did not cause this much panic amongst politicians, and their death rates were far far higher.

[Tankus]

W.H.O. have underestimated the mortality rate on SARS ,now based on new figures coming from China ,It has now been increased to 14%, and up to 40% fatality in the over 60's....................

Containment in China is proving difficult !

[andsome]

It needs someone who knows the full story to come clean, and put us all in the FULL picture about this disease. I don't ever remember such a panic amongst governments over a disease which has affected so few people. Things are OBVIOUSLY potentially far worse than we have been told.

[Tankus]

Popped up in Canada again

China has gone very quiet......!

[Tankus]

Bad taste......?

Tourists flock to see Beijing Sars hospital

Thousands of people a week are flocking to Beijing's newest tourist attraction - a decommissioned Sars hospital.

More than 1,000 people in one day alone visited the Xiaotangshan Hospital, where most of the Chinese capital's Sars victims were treated and where many died.

The makeshift hospital, set up in eight days to accommodate nearly 700 patients at the peak of the outbreak in May, sent its last patients home in June.

According to the Beijing Morning Post, it's been included on an package tour of urban Beijing costing £2 a head.

Tourists are shown the wards, told stories of how doctors and nurses battled the deadly virus and can buy photographs of medics in capes and masks treating infected patients.

Apart from being a tourist attraction, the hospital is being kept on standby in case there is a fresh outbreak of the virus.

Ananova

[andsome]

I like the other story better.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_798238.html