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Singapore's health ministry today issued quarantine orders to 70 people who may have come into contact with a Taiwanese SARS patient. However, a Geneva-based spokesperson for the World Health Organization, Maria Cheng, said it was unlikely that the severe acute respiratory syndrome case could spark an epidemic. "It looks very much like an isolated event," Cheng said. "He was travelling to Singapore but he was asymptomatic while there and, according to data we have, patients are not contagious while asymptomatic." The Ministry of Health said in a statement that those 70 people may have been exposed to severe acute respiratory...

For all the public concern over the rapid spread of the new Fujian strain of influenza, health officials and doctors say there is still no way to know whether this year's flu season is particularly severe or just off to an early start. And for all the clamor for dwindling supplies of vaccine, no one knows how effective the current vaccine will be against the Fujian strain. But the flu season has already thrown some realities about the public health system into sharp relief, these experts say. It suggests that the country needs to be far better prepared to deal...

Though droplets can travel through air, the virus is not light enough to float freely, so it will sink onto surfaces, says WHO. But some experts feel anything that can move through air is airborne WHETHER the Sars virus is airborne or not is still being disputed by researchers, even though the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said it is not. The dispute stems from the definition of airborne - scientists who study indoor air quality say anything that can move through air is airborne But the WHO has said that while the droplets can travel through air, it still...

WASHINGTON — Tennessee is better prepared to handle a bioterrorism attack and other health emergencies than most states, according to report released today. Tennessee tied with California, Maryland and Florida for the top score in the report by Trust for America's Health, a Washington-based nonprofit. Tennessee and the other states that topped the list met seven out of 10 public health goals measured by the Trust. Dr. Kenneth Robinson, Tennessee's health commissioner, said the state was successful because it listened to numerous health officials before establishing bioterrorism preparedness plans. "The strength of our preparedness has been predicated on excellent cooperation...

There's an easy, yet frightening, answer to the question about whether an insidious lung infection that swept though Asia in the past year and held the medical world hostage will re-emerge. Doctors and public health care officials agree it is inevitable that sudden acute respiratory syndrome – SARS – will come again in some form. That's the straightforward answer. The question with no clear-cut answer is how well-prepared the medical community is to handle an outbreak. "That is a very hard question to answer," said Dr. Gonzalo Ballon-Landa, chairman of the San Diego County Medical Society's Group to Eradicate Resistant...

A year ago, a mystery virus began to kill people in China. Causing an illness dubbed severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the virus quickly spread beyond Asia and for a few months stirred fears of a worldwide epidemic. With stunning speed, scientists identified the virus and decoded its genetic sequence (SN: 4/26/03, p. 262: http://www.sciencenews.org/20030426/fob8.asp). Now, a research team has claimed victory in the race to identify the cellular receptor—the protein to which the virus attaches when it infects cells—for the SARS virus. Since the protein turned out to be a well-known one that had previously been implicated in heart...

Scientists believe they may have found a way to beat even the most powerful strains of flu and maybe even Sars. Researchers at Imperial College London say they are able to control the immune system's response to flu. Previous studies have suggested the immune system may sometimes do more harm than good when it comes to flu. This is because it responds too strongly to an attack, preventing recovery and in extreme cases attacking the body and causing death. A study published in The Lancet late last year suggested this was why flu can turn from a nuisance virus into...

A genetic susceptibility may explain why SARS raged last year in southeast Asia and nowhere else in the world outside of Toronto, Taiwanese researchers reported this week. They found a certain variant in an immune system gene called human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, made patients in Taiwan much more likely to develop life-threatening symptoms of SARS. The gene variant is common in people of southern Chinese descent, the team at Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei reported. Their finding, published in an online journal, BMC Medical Genetics, must be confirmed by independent researchers. But the Taiwanese team said the genetics could...

The heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cautioned last week that another outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) is possible in the United States or elsewhere. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding and HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said at a Sep 26 news conference that the federal agencies are preparing for the possible re-emergence of the virus. Gerberding said, "We don't know whether this virus is going to come back or not, but as an infectious disease expert, I can say in my experience I've never seen...

Some physicians say differentiating this emerging infection from regular coughs and colds could take a great deal of time and resources. Physicians around the world are sounding the alarm about the great burden that severe acute respiratory syndrome may have on the health care system this fall. "We look to the upcoming flu season with anxiety," said Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former director-general of the World Health Organization, at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago last month. Her sentiments were echoed by many others. And the reason why is clear. Traditional respiratory illnesses will crop up...

Those who lived bound by a miracle, doctors say Three stories of wondrous recoveries Five angels told me to wake up: Nurse A comatose nurse dreamed five angels were calling to her from a mountaintop. A dying patient fantasized he would bite through his throat tube, strangle his caregivers, and escape. A man whose older brother lay near-death smoked cigars and sweated out the disease at home. Each person contracted Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome this year. While 44 people in Toronto died of SARS, these are among the 331 who lived. Why they survived is of great importance to scientists,...

TORONTO - A leading Ontario health official is defending the length of the quarantine for SARS, after suggestions that 10 days may not be long enough. • INDEPTH: SARS: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome "There's still a consensus in the scientific community and public health community that 10 days is the period to put people into quarantine," Dr. Colin D'Cunha, Ontario's commissioner of public health, told CBC Newsworld. Some people are questioning the current quarantine period after a student doctor developed SARS-like symptoms 12 days after being exposed to the virus. • FROM JUNE 6, 2003: SARS scare at Toronto obstetrics...

Student MD was quarantined 10 days Mount Sinai closes its obstetric ward A student doctor on an obstetric ward, who developed SARS symptoms after his 10-day quarantine, has forced four mothers and five newborns into quarantine. A fifth woman, about to give birth, has also been ordered into isolation. The unidentified medical student, who began working on Mount Sinai Hospital's labour and delivery floor Tuesday, assisted in two deliveries before becoming ill, said Dr. Donald Low, the hospital's chief microbiologist and a leading figure in the city's fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome. "He may have exposed patients, and obstetrical...

A month before Toronto was plunged into a second, mysterious SARS crisis, nurses at Toronto's North York General Hospital warned in vain that three psychiatric patients appeared to have caught the disease. The ward lies directly below the SARS unit that had been newly installed in the facility. Nurses heard reports of a "leakage" from the SARS unit to their ward at about the time the patients got sick in late April. But their superiors at North York General said their concerns were unfounded, one nurse said this week, the patients were never recorded on SARS logs and Toronto's outbreak...

Some early lessons and legacies of SARS THESE days, any international meeting on health is sure to have Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) high on the agenda. And the annual gathering of the World Health Organisation (WHO), held in Geneva from May 19th-28th, was no exception. Representatives of 192 countries recognised SARS as the first grave infectious disease to emerge in the 21st century. They also noted that lessons learned in the response to the disease, such as the need for prompt and transparent reporting, would be relevant to the next new disease, as well as to possible acts of...

Fed-up nurses protesting unsafe conditions in hospitals dismissed Health Minister Tony Clement's assurances that the province is listening to them and doing all it can to prevent the spread of SARS. Yesterday, Clement sent an open letter to "Ontario's health-care workers," promising the health ministry is doing all it can to protect them. "People are counting on our health care system and on each and every health-care worker in our system," states Clement's letter. "While I know how hard it is sometimes, our patients must remain our priority." As she stood outside Scarborough General Hospital with other workers involved in...

``Invisible'' Sars patients - carriers of the disease who do not display symptoms - will continue to pose a threat to local health authorities struggling to achieve zero infection rates for the disease, Director of Health Margaret Chan said yesterday. At a press briefing, Chan said the problem, which threatened local healthcare workers, was also exasperating health authorities in other Sars-stricken areas. ``Although we have encountered such situations in both local public and private hospitals, these occurrences are not confined to Hong Kong,'' she said. ``Overseas health authorities also told us [they have recorded]similar cases [in which patients'] symptoms were...

Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement said the province will cover the cost of doubling the pay for health-care workers on SARS duty at four Toronto hospitals. The hospitals -- Scarborough General, North York General, St. Michael's and the Etobicoke site of William Osler Health Centre -- are part of an alliance formed to handle Toronto's SARS cases. The proposed pay hike would would boost the salary of top-end nurses to $66 per hour. The rate would be equivalent to that earned by temporary nurses placed by private agencies, whose high pay has been a source of anger for staff workers....

TORONTO (CP) - The World Health Organization said Wednesday it won't share details of rumoured exported SARS cases from Toronto unless it can determine there is some substance to the claims. WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said the organization wants to determine whether there is any "there there" before it bothers Canadian officials with the alleged exported cases. "I think first what we need to do is to make sure that these are real cases," Thompson, director of communications for the communicable diseases branch, said from Geneva. "I mean, if there's any there there, I'm sure that Health Canada will know...

Toronto — The Ontario government will cover the cost of doubling pay for health-care workers on SARS duty at four Toronto hospitals, Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement said Wednesday. Mr. Clement said the government supports the move to increase compensation for front-line workers but did not endorse requests from other health workers in hospitals dealing with severe acute respiratory system that they get more money as well. "There's a lot of pressure right now," Mr. Clement said. "[But] if you're saying that the solution to SARS is to pay everyone double in the system, that isn't the solution." Mr. Clement...