Posted on 08/21/2003 12:10:10 PM PDT by Brian S
Fears that an outbreak of a cold-like illness among patients at a 101-bed nursing home in the South Fraser area was linked to a mutant SARS-like virus were eased yesterday.
Since July 1, 11 residents at Kinsmen Place Lodge in Surrey have died from an outbreak of respiratory illness.
Tests on some of the victims have shown the presence of a coronavirus similar to SARS.
Don Bower of the Fraser Health Au-thority said 11 residents and six out of 129 staff had cold symptoms at the second nursing home, which has not been identified. He said tests have failed to find any flu or pneumonia, eliminating the chance of SARS.
"All tests came back negative," said Bower yesterday. "They are over their symptoms. There was no pneumonia at all.
"What we had was a case of some summer colds in the facility, and it's resolved."
At Kinsmen, 20 residents were still in isolation and three staff members are in home-quarantine. And 19 staffers at Surrey Memorial Hospital remain off work.
One elderly patient is still in isolation at the hospital with pneumonia.
It will take several weeks before enough of the virus is genetically map-ped to say once and for all whether it is SARS. The delay is caused by the need to grow the coronavirus and get enough genetic material to map the genome -- only 500 base pairs out of 30,000 have been mapped.
The one or two per cent of the virus mapped so far bears a close similarity to SARS, although experts say it's very early on. They feel that the virus is a milder mutation of SARS, which has killed 800 around the world.
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