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<p>MANILA &#8212; The SARS virus, which claimed more than 800 lives last spring and crippled economies from Hong Kong to Toronto, threatens to re-emerge when colder weather brings on the winter flu season, health officials in Asia are cautioning.</p> <p>"Right now, our thrust is on helping prepare vulnerable countries," said Dr. Elizabeth Miranda, a specialist in communicable diseases at the World Health Organization's regional office here.</p>

<p>July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, a disease that killed more than 800 people and infected more than 8,000 worldwide, may return in this year's flu season, according to new survey.</p> <p>Among the nine public health experts surveyed by the London- based Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, three said SARS may recur, two said SARS would not recur, and four were uncertain, according to an e-mailed statement from the British Medical Association.</p>

SARS Epidemic May Reemerge, CDC Director Warns Wed June 18, 2003 03:04 PM ET CHICAGO (Reuters) - Like deadly flu epidemics of the past, SARS may reemerge later this year as a global health threat, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday. Dr. Julie Gerberding pointed out that infectious diseases like SARS and monkeypox are spread around the world by travelers or by trade in exotic animals. "This is the new normal: emerging infectious diseases ... that create immediate global concerns because of the movement of people and animals," Gerberding said in a...

<p>CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- One of two patients being monitored in the Triangle for possible exposure to SARS died Friday. Preliminary tests from the Centers for Disease Control were negative. Meanwhile, dozens of people in the Triangle are under quarantine for possible exposure to SARS.</p>

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (news - web sites) may renew a warning against travel to Toronto if a feared upsurge in SARS (news - web sites) was confirmed in Canada's largest city and business capital, a WHO spokesman said on Wednesday. But there was "nothing automatic" about issuing a call to avoid unnecessary travel to Toronto, even if the suspected outbreak could push it further above some WHO trigger points for such alerts, spokesman Iain Simpson added. Canadian health officials said on Tuesday they were investigating 12 pneumonia patients at a Toronto clinic who had developed symptoms...

BEIJING - The World Health Organisation (WHO) is worried about a possible surge in the Sars epidemic during China's annual summer floods as overloaded sewerage systems back up, a spokesman for the agency said yesterday. The Sars virus does not appear to be transmitted by water but it can survive for days in faeces, which might be spread by overflowing sewage, said Mr Bob Dietz, a spokesman in Beijing for the UN agency. Areas throughout southern, central and north-eastern China suffer deadly flooding every year. Thousands of homes are inundated by waters laced with sewage that also can contaminate drinking-water...

One of Hong Kong's leading medical investigators into Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has warned that an even wider global epidemic could occur next winter, even if the current outbreak proves to have peaked. Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, a microbiologist and one of two leaders of the Sars investigation team at Hong Kong university, said that other forms of the Coronavirus, of which Sars is the most deadly variant, go dormant in summer and become active again in winter. There was no reason to believe that the Sars virus would behave any differently. "This means that the coming winter may be even...

<p>The most chilling moment of my medical career occurred in 1985, when I led a program to test incoming U.S. Army recruits for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. At the time, little was known about the emerging HIV virus or AIDS. As I began to analyze blood samples from the first 600,000 recruits, I discovered that HIV had silently infected a large cross section of apparently healthy young adults. At that moment I realized that we were already losing the race to control the virus, and that the human species was destined to be afflicted with HIV as a fact of life -- and death -- for decades to come.</p>