Monday 21 April 2003, 10:05 PM
The virus that causes SARS and has killed more than 200 people worldwide has the potential to be developed into a biological weapon like anthrax, according to a scientific researcher.
Yuen Kwok-yung, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, told a conference that the SARS virus, a family of the coronavirus, not only hits the respiratory system of a patient but the spine, spleen and even the neural system.
Although experts are only "beginning to learn about the virus," Yuen said it tends to mutate and change and becomes more severe during the process, giving it the potential to be "developed into a biological weapon" like anthrax.
Yuen made the comments yesterday at a conference where hundreds of officials and experts from 10 Asian countries are seeking ways to contain severe acute respiratory syndrome. The conference ended on Monday.
Most of the more than 3,800 SARS cases have been in Asia, particularly mainland China and Hong Kong.
Health officials and epidemiologists today urged people to be on the alert to prevent SARS from spreading further.
"Prevention is by far the most important thing," Joseph Sung, a medical professor from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said.
"Treatment is at a very experimental stage and it could be difficult and painful," Sung said.
The combination of antiviral drug Ribavirin and steroids has been the best treatment so far but still not very effective in many cases, he added.
Chang Shan-chwen, a medical doctor at Taiwan's elite National Taiwan University Hospital, said he was worried how less developed countries with limited medical resources could contain the disease.
Although thousands of Taiwanese travel to China and Hong Kong a day, Taiwan has reported only 29 SARS cases. There has been no deaths and the outbreak has not spread in hospitals nor moved to the community at large.
Chang attributed Taiwan's success in containing the disease to strict quarantine orders, low-pressure isolation wards and other facilities at its hospitals.
His hospital had treated Taiwan's first SARS patient without noticing the man contracted the deadly disease at first. But medical staff at the emergency room had not been infected because they put on protective gear as a routine measure, Chang said.
In cases where patients did not respond well to the standard antiviral drug and steroids, they were given massive doses of immunoglobulin intravenously, an expensive treatment at the cost of the government, he said.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/21/1050777215431.html.