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Confusion reigns over suspected SARS case   18:23 30 December 03   NewScientist.com news service   A suspected case of a man infected with the SARS virus, has been reported in China. More tests are being carried out as a "confused laboratory picture" emerges. Some reports suggested on Tuesday that SARS had indeed been confirmed by laboratory tests on samples from the 32-year-old television producer. Previous incidents since the world was declared SARS-free in late June, have proved to be either false alarms or isolated accidents in laboratory workers. For example, a case of SARS was confirmed in a medical researcher in Taiwan...

A Kaohsiung hospital yesterday reported this winter's first SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) case in Taiwan. Doctors at the Union Hospital said they diagnosed a resident of the southern Taiwan port city as a suspected SARS case. The resident, whose identity was withheld, visited the hospital in the afternoon. He showed a typical SARS symptom of a high fever, doctors said. "He suffered from a 37.5 degree fever for two days before coming to us," one doctor pointed out. The Kaohsiung resident returned from a trip to China not long ago. After the diagnosis, the patient was assigned to a...

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) - multi-country outbreak - Update 24 WHO Guangdong China team to issue its report 8 April 2003 Disease Outbreak Reported The WHO expert team in Guangdong Province, China will be issuing its official interim report and recommendations on the local SARS situation early tomorrow. The four-person team, headed by John MacKenzie of Australia, has been in Guangdong since Thursday 3 April. The team was charged to assess the local situation and to support the strengthening of surveillance, clinical management, infection control, and laboratory evaluation of SARS cases. The team has visited Foshan City, where the...

CHINESE authorities have identified the patient who started the Sars epidemic that has killed at least 770 people around the world. Huang Xingchu, 36, a cook who prepared wild animal dishes in a restaurant in Shenzhen on the Hong Kong border, survived the infection, but now lives in hiding for fear of retribution. Medical experts believe that the Sars virus was passed from the civet cat, a favourite on menus around Hong Kong, to human beings. A restaurant kitchen or livestock market are the most likely places where this happened. The infected cook lost his job and many friends because...

'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...

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...

<p>We know what it is it. It is the SARS virus. But, to which virus family it belongs, we don't know yet," he added.</p> <p>Some researchers believe it is a new type of paramyxovirus, but studies from other labs suggest it may belong to another virus family.</p>

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...

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...

Chinese Government Stonewalls WHO on SARS Virus, But Identity of Guangdong Medical Professor Revealed This morning there was news from Jeff Gittings, who is a reporter from Guardian Unlimited . The reporter had just returned from China and his report is shocking. The Chinese are still stonewalling World Health Organization officials who had requested visits to sites where the SARS virus had originated. Guangdong Province is apparently under a complete information lock-down. Quoting briefly from the Guardian report: * * * On March 28, after a week in Beijing, the WHO team finally thought it had secured permission to visit...

Health - AP Mainland professor who died in Hong Kong spread mysterious form of pneumonia; another death reported Thu Mar 20, 8:09 AM ET By HELEN LUK, Associated Press Writer HONG KONG - An infected medical professor from mainland China apparently carried a mysterious flu-like disease to a Hong Kong hotel where six other people caught the illness, possibly as they waited for elevators or through the air-conditioning system, officials said Thursday.  Some of those he infected are suspected of then carrying the disease into Vietnam, Singapore and Canada, as well as to a Hong Kong hospital where dozens of...

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...

Where does the virus come from? This anecdote, reported by the Journal Ming Bao on march 29 is interesting: "WHO pointed out in earlier days that SARS was originally detected in FoShan and HeYuan county, Guangdong Province. A medicial professor in RenMin hospital of HeYuan county named Xie JinKui does not agree with that assumption. Prof. Xie said that the first case in HeYuan was detected on 17th of Dec, last year (2002). The patient is a 35 year old man. He is a cook in ShenZhen, working in a restaurant where he has close contact with wild animals, such...

FOSHAN, China -- In an extraordinary move, the Chinese government apologized yesterday for not warning people quickly about the dangers of the deadly mystery illness that began here.The apology came as international health investigators said they believed they were on the trail of the first person ever infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome."Today, we apologize to everyone," said Li Liming, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control."Our medical departments and our mass media suffered poor coordination," he said. "We weren't able to muster our forces in helping to provide everyone with scientific publicity and allowing the masses to get...

BEIJING - China has found that some people infected with Sars did not show any symptoms and were not infectious after their bodies developed antibodies to fight the disease, state media said. The findings by scientists in Heyuan city in southern China's Guangdong province adds further mystery to Sars, for which there is no known vaccine or cure. The China News Service (CNS) said scientists concluded that the disease can be symptomless after studying people who had come in contact with Heyuan's first Sars case, a man identified by only his surname Huang. Medical experts in Heyuan checked his family...

After reviewing several case records, scientists yesterday said that the initial outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome may have erupted as early as November 2001, even though China claims its first SARS case was discovered just seven months ago. Dr. James Maguire, a team member from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention temporary based in Beijing, who traveled to Guangdong to investigate the SARS outbreak last month, said that the death of a Taiwanese man, Huang Hsuan-ping (À«Å¥), in Guangdong in January 2002 is the earliest suspected case of SARS now known. Maguire said Huang's case was crucial...

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...

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...

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...