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U.S. Warns Citizens in Vietnam Because of SARS Sun March 23, 2003 09:55 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department on Sunday urged U.S. citizens to consider leaving Vietnam because of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a deadly form of pneumonia, and said it was offering free flights out to family members of U.S. diplomats in the country. The move follows the U.S. government's decision on Friday to suspend official travel to Vietnam and to advise U.S. citizens to put off non-emergency travel there because of the disease and the reduced availability of medical treatment. "The Department of State...

Guangdong doctor linked to SARS outbreak International effort reveals links between SARS outbreak and Chinese pneumonia, and possible agent. | By Robert Walgate Margaret Chan, Health Director of Hong Kong, said today that the source of the current international outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) seems to be a doctor from Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, the southernmost region of China, which saw 300 cases of a mystery pneumonia between November 2002 and February 2003. Chan's comments are reported in the Hong Kong Standard. China only recently agreed to cooperate with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the US...

Seven victims of mystery pneumonia stayed on same floor of Hong Kong hotel 01:47 PM EST Mar 19 MARGARET WONG HONG KONG (AP) - Seven people who came down with a mysterious form of pneumonia, including two who have died, spent time on the same floor of a Hong Kong hotel before the outbreak prompted a global alert, officials said Wednesday. One was a 64-year-old medical professor from Guangzhou, China, who died in Hong Kong on March 4, and one was a 78-year-old woman from Toronto, who died after returning to Canada, according to a Hong Kong government spokeswoman. The...

The unprecedented computer and brain power focused on the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak is beginning to yield hints about how to fight the disease. Within 3 weeks of fingering the culprit, scientists in several labs had sequenced the novel 30,000-base coronavirus. Last week, researchers from Singapore described their comparison of sequences drawn from 14 patients around the world, providing insights on the mutation rate of the virus and tools to track its spread. And on 13 May, researchers from Germany used the sequence to work out a probable structure for one of the key proteins involved in the...

'Super-spreaders' of Sars are elderly: WHO   The make up of extremely infectious patients of the SARS virus, known as "super-spreaders," is becoming clearer, with many appearing to be the elderly or those already suffering medical ailments, a World Health Organization official said Monday. "Super spreaders" of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome are a handful of carriers who have infected 10 or more people, often family members and medical workers treating them. They are seen as a key link in the transmission of the respiratory disease. "We are getting more and more information on 'super spreaders' and it appears that...

Huang Xingchu, a chef in Heyuan County and well known for his expert preparation of exotic animals, is believed to be one of three Sars index patients in Guangdong who triggered the global outbreak of the killer disease. World Health Organisation (WHO) officials, who recently toured Guangdong, believe he could have got the disease from the animals he handled.However, 35-year-old Huang is not only alive and kicking, but he is back at his job as a chef for two big restaurants in Shenzhen, his father told Sing Tao Daily, sister paper of The Standard, when a reporter visited his hometown.Huang's...

SARS' strength a worry By M.A.J. McKENNA The Atlanta Journal-Constitution The first major analysis comparing strains of the SARS virus from different parts of the world reveals that, contrary to expectations, the virus is not changing significantly as it spreads across continents. The finding, published late Thursday on a medical journal's Web site, is not good news. It suggests the infectiousness and high death rate of severe acute respiratory syndrome will persist, rather than diminish over time as other new infectious diseases have done. But the finding may have a positive side as well. If the virus remains stable, instead...

Recovered patients are given this advice after HK study shows they can harbour the Sars virus for at least a month after being discharged DOCTORS in Hongkong are advising patients who have recovered from Sars to avoid hugging and kissing their loved ones for at least a month because there could still be traces of the virus in their bodies. One person heeding this counsel is the chief of the Hospital Authority, Dr William Ho, 44, who resumed work on Wednesday after surviving a Sars attack. He said he dared not embrace or touch his children and wife out of...

The Sars outbreak The day the world caught a cold It began in a province of China, spread through Hong Kong to reach three continents and now threatens to plunge the world economy into freefall Gaby Hinsliff and Mark Townsend in London, Ed Helmore in Toronto and John Aglionby in Jakarta Sunday April 27, 2003 The Observer Nursing his pint of Guinness in a bar in downtown Toronto, Mike Smith was sanguine yesterday about his chances of surviving the deadly illness sweeping his native city. 'People have over-reacted,' scoffed the media analyst. 'You have a better chance of being hit...

It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and while the citizens of Beijing don their white masks before nervously venturing out, and travellers on flights out of Hong Kong view the most innocent of sneezes with deep suspicion, they are hanging out the bunting at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organisation. The Sars epidemic has arrived in the nick of time to salvage the reputation of - in the words of Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet - "this heavily-corroded bureaucracy that over the last two decades has variously 'failed', 'neglected' and 'provided no urgent...

HUNDE, China — An hour south of Guangzhou, the Dongyuan animal market presents endless opportunities for an emerging germ. In hundreds of cramped stalls that stink of blood and guts, wholesale food vendors tend to veritable zoos that will grace Guangdong Province's tables: snakes, chickens, cats, turtles, badgers, frogs. And, in summer, sometimes rats, too.They are all stacked in cages one on top of another — which in turn serve as seats, card tables and dining quarters for the poor migrants who work there. On a recent morning, near stall 17, there were beheaded snakes, disemboweled frogs and feathers...

April 26, 2003 Doctors say this isn't the big one -- at least not yet By Anthony Brown LIKE earthquakewatchers in California, doctors around the world have been waiting for the 'big one'. Diseases come and diseases go, but it is thought inevitable that one of them at one time will be so quick to spread, incurable and so lethal that even the full force of modern science could not stop millions of deaths. The bubonic plague killed 25 million people in Europe in the 14th century, the Spanish flu in 1918 killed 70 million. Aids has killed 12 million...

IN WHITCHURCH-STOUFFVILLE, Ont. - Pat Tamlin, a registered nurse with a cheery disposition who often bragged about her good health, had SARS. Still, she kept it together as the potentially fatal disease separated her from her family and sucked the vigour from her 42-year-old body so that sitting up seemed a Herculean task. Together, that is, until her husband called with some news. "Nicole has a temperature," Rich Tamlin told his wife from the home quarantine he was sharing with their 15-year-old daughter and her 19-year-old sister, Erin, in this small city surrounded by farmland northeast of Toronto. "I just...

THE Chinese-American businessman settled into his aisle seat on board a flight from Shanghai to Hanoi, thankful to be out of the biting northern winter wind which seemed to make his persistent fever worse. He hoped the flight would pass quickly. He was feverish, suffering shortness of breath and when he could gasp air it usually resulted in a coughing fit. He thought little of his symptoms; winter in mainland China can be cruel, often resulting in debilitating colds and, to make matters worse, he was run down from a hectic work schedule. His fever came and went as he...

One of the most tediously over-venerated bits of British political wisdom is Prime Minister Harold MacMillan's amused Edwardian response as to what he feared most in the months ahead: "Events, dear boy, events." But even events come, so to speak, politically predetermined. If, for example, you have powerful public sector unions, you will be at the mercy of potentially crippling strikes. The quasi-Eastern European Britain of the 1970s was brought to a halt by a miners' strike in a way that would have been impossible in the United States. So it is with SARS. The appearance of the virus itself...

Anatomy of the deadly China syndrome Virus Sars is first of many epidemics to come Ian Sample, science correspondent Friday April 25, 2003 The Guardian We're unsure where it came from, have no treatment for it and no idea when or where it will spread next. The virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome is shrouded in unknowns. But two things are agreed upon: it's lethal, and it's not going to go away. What's more, we can look forward to far more new and extremely dangerous viruses in the next few years. In mid-February, a retired Chinese doctor, Liu Jianlun,...

Sars death toll hits new high in Hong Kong By Severin Carrell 20 April 2003 The global crisis over the Sars virus intensified yesterday after the death toll in Hong Kong reached record levels and Singapore imposed draconian measures to control the outbreak. The authorities in Hong Kong said 12 people died yesterday from the flu-like Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome – the province's highest daily figure since the epidemic began last month, taking the total toll to 81. Clearly unnerved by the fast spread of the disease, the authorities in Singapore announced that from tomorrow Sars victims who flouted quarantine...

SARS has tested the modern world's ability to corral a contagious, deadly disease. Everybody fighting the outbreak — from the World Health Organization to Toronto public health authorities to Scarborough Grace Hospital — claims they have done the best possible job. Despite valiant efforts, 170 people have died around the world, 13 in Toronto alone. Well over 3,400 are suspected or probably infected, 247 in Ontario. Many thousands had to be placed in quarantine, 7,000 in Toronto. The disease is growing, not shrinking. A detailed analysis shows mistakes were made along the way. Poor detective work was done. Information was...

<p>Toronto public health officials are trying to calm fears about a possible SARS infection that can't be linked to other cases of the flu-like disease.</p> <p>Dr. Sheela Basrur, Toronto's medical officer of health, said that four people in a condominium building were possible victims of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.</p>

SARS virus threatens to become 21st century's first major disease PARIS (AFP) - The SARS virus, the fatal respiratory illness confounding doctors and researchers, could become the first serious new disease of the century and reach pandemic proportions in a world where people are constantly on the move. With the exception of AIDS (news - web sites), most of the worrying diseases that surfaced in the last century, like the Ebola (news - web sites) virus, never really posed a danger to public health at an international level. This was mainly because transmission of the disease between humans was never...