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READ!! SARS - Waiting For The Cure
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 07:13:32 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: Mark White <tausyankee () optusnet com au> Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 22:03:46 +1000 To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] SARS - Waiting For The Cure David, The information in the article is out of date...I strongly suggest you tell your readers to visit the cdc web site. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/ This is a mutated version of the common cold, with a 4 percent mortality rate. 30 cases were reported in the past 30 hours or so in Hong Kong, with outbreaks now in Bejing as well. The Hong Kong hospital system is approaching crisis, as health workers fall ill. China sharply raises death toll from SARS Elisabeth Rosenthal The New York Times Thursday, March 27, 2003 It reports 31 deaths by end of February GUANGZHOU, China Chinese health officials Wednesday dramatically increased their estimates of the number of cases and deaths in China caused by a new mystery pneumonia that international health officials believe originated here late last year. Officials in Guangdong Province, the center of China's epidemic, reporting an estimated 792 cases and 31 deaths as of the end of February, a rise from the 305 case and 5 deaths they had previously reported. The new tallies means that China now probably has had more cases and deaths than any other country, although the latest estimates have not been officially sanctioned by China's Ministry of Health or reviewed by international health officials. About 500 cases have been reported elsewhere in the world. The new figures are being released just days after a World Health Organization team arrived in China to help investigate this country's epidemic of the mystery pneumonia, which goes by the name SARS, for severe acute respiratory syndrome. For months, Chinese official tried to hide the problem, health experts said, and in recent weeks world health officials have applied increasing pressure to China to improve their cooperation and statistical reporting on the new disease. While all other countries that have experienced cases of the new pneumonia, including Vietnam, Singapore and Canada, send daily updates of cases and deaths to the World Health Organization, China has been consistently unwilling or unable to provide such information, even though it is vital to tracking the disease's spread. Even Wednesday's newly revised estimates, which officials of the World Health Organization praised as a "great step forward," cover only cases through the end of February and provide no information about cases in the past four weeks. The previous tallies covered only cases reported up to Feb. 10. "We want to keep the spotlight on folks here and to encourage them to be part of the solution," said Dr. Rob Breiman, of the International Center of Diarrheal Disease Research Bangladesh, who is a member of the World Health Organization team currently in China. "We want to use the incredible amount of information they have collected here to help solve the problem." The international health officials first sat down Tuesday with their Chinese counterparts to look at the internal data concerning the epidemic and said they were generally impressed with how the Chinese had investigated and sought to control the disease. But they noted that data was painfully slow in emerging from that system. World Health Organization officials in Beijing say they have still not been given statistics on the disease in other provinces, despite repeated requests. In China disease statistics are often regarded as politically sensitive and are not publicly released. China first began providing information on its epidemic to the World Health Organization only about two weeks ago. Doctors and officials in southern China said that it started in November, peaked in mid-February, and that the number of cases had fallen off dramatically in March. But the country has not provided recent data to support these claims. Just Wednesday, Beijing acknowledged nine cases of the disease and three deaths in the capital. As of last week, senior city health officials were still vehemently denying that Beijing had cases, despite the fact that two patients had died of a suspicious pneumonia at the People's Liberation Army 302 Hospital, and several doctors and nurses had fallen ill. Chinese health officials have recommended no special precautions against the virus to the general public, though. In Singapore, which has about 70 cases, all of them recent, health officials have quarantined more than 700 people with flu-like symptoms and ordered all schools closed through April 6. In Hong Kong, where many people have taken to wearing masks in crowded spaces, health officials reported 30 new cases in the past 24 hours, almost all of them hospitalized with pneumonia. Scientists are still uncertain about the germ that causes the disease, which has sickened more than a thousand people worldwide, although the most likely candidate is now the corona virus, a class of viruses which causes the common cold in humans as well as a variety of illnesses in animals, including pigs and chickens. Many new viral diseases originate by jumping to humans from animal populations. Rural areas of southern China are well-known among virologists as a breeding ground for new viruses, presumably because humans and farm animals live in close proximity there. The germ generally requires extremely close contact for spread, and health care workers as well as family members of sick patients have been the groups by far most infected. But there is also evidence that the disease can spread in poorly ventilated spaces, such as airplanes. On Tuesday, nine members of a Hong Kong tour group were reportedly ill with the disease, after flying on an Air China flight to Beijing that was carrying a man who had the illness. Chinese aviation officials were Wednesday attempting to contact hundreds of other passengers on the flight. Wednesday's new statistics were release by provincial health officials here and have not yet been sanctioned yet by China's Ministry of Health. Some scientists who have been in discussions with the ministry expect they will be revised upwards yet again over the next few days, especially as reports of more recent cases and of cases from other provinces trickle in. With little hard information about the disease released by China's government, rumors of new cases have run wild in China's cities. The Chinese press has been banned from reporting on the topic. Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- READ!! SARS - Waiting For The Cure Dave Farber (Mar 27)