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But mother Abigain, those 3 people SURELY interacted with more than 21 people... and then those 21 people only closely interacted with 2 each?

The transmission must occur while symptoms are present.

It is only in the brief (and I do mean brief) period where the person begins to cough and before they are too sick to be out, that the viral transmission takes place.

You are, of course, right that this is not a highly virulent airborne superbug. But consider the hundreds of travelers who are returning infected from Asia.

Somehow, someway people are becoming infected by strangers. That is the concern

CASES RISE TO 750

MONDAY, March 24

(HealthScoutNews) --- American health officials now say the overwhelming majority of 39 suspected U.S. cases of SARS involve people who traveled recently to Asia, an area where the deadly respiratory illness has hit the hardest.

The U.S. count of possible victims of the severe acute respiratory syndrome increased by 17 Monday, which moves the country to fourth place on the list of 15 nations reporting cases. New counts Monday from some of those countries, coupled with the revised U.S. totals, now bring the global total of SARS victims to more than 750 stricken and 22 dead.

Thirty-two of the people being monitored in 18 states had traveled recently to Asia, according to Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The others, she told a news conference Monday, are "people who either have lived in the home with the case patient and had very close face-to-face contact or healthcare personnel who had very close contact without using respiratory precautions."

Researchers now have a possible new virus as the cause of the mysterious illness. Gerberding said that the candidate is a previously unknown member of the coronavirus family.

Two coronaviruses are known to infect humans. One is responsible for about one-third of cases of the common cold, while the other frequently causes health care-associated upper respiratory infections in premature infants.
The case for a coronavirus appears to be stronger than that for a paramyxovirus, which was the leading -- and only -- contender as the cause last week.

"There's evidence [for a coronavirus] in a variety of forms," Gerberding said. "We can culture it. We can see it on an electron microscope in respiratory fluids, we have specific assays that are picking it up in a variety of tissues and specimens."
The evidence also shows that one patient who had tested negative to coronavirus antibodies at the beginning of the illness developed antibodies and tested positive by the end of the illness.

"This could still be an incidental finding, but that's looking increasingly doubtful," Gerberding said. "The challenge is, we have a pretty nonspecific illness and we are dealing with families of viruses that are ubiquitous."

"Finding them in tissue is not the same thing as saying they cause the disease," she added. "But we have been able to localize them using pretty sophisticated probes and tissue techniques, and our confidence is building."

Currently, three groups of coronaviruses are known. The new virus, if confirmed, would probably fall into a fourth group.
If confirmed, it's possible that the coronavirus is only one of two or more agents involved.

There are no treatments for illnesses caused by coronaviruses, but Gerberding said the U.S. Department of Defense Department was examining its existing arsenal of antivirals to see whether one would be effective against this particular bug.

Hong Kong, meanwhile, announced two more deaths and another 38 people infected with SARS, the Associated Press reports.
Among them may well be Hong Kong's chief health hospital official, who was hospitalized with pneumonia symptoms Sunday night.