The United Nations World Health Organization is a great orgranization which is leading the way in the fight against the spread of the new pneumonia. Thank God for the UN.
WHO assesses data on mystery illness
Report from China details
spread of pneumonia strain
March 17 -- U.S. health officials are analyzing samples from a mysterious respiratory illness described by the World Health Organization as “a worldwide threat.” “Today” host Katie Couric discusses the disease with CDC’s Dr. Julie Gerberding.
March 16 — Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. surgeon general and former director of the CDC, describes the illness’ symptoms and how it is transmitted.
A REPORT ON the new strain of “atypical pneumonia” — known Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS — was received late Sunday at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.
“With four months of meticulously obtained information from China, we believe we will have the answers to how this disease acts in populations and how we can best deal with it,” said David Heymann, the chief of the organization’s communicable diseases division.
Health experts suspect the first cases of SARS, which has killed nine people and sickened more than 400 others worldwide, appeared last November in China, although it may only have spread beyond its borders this month.
Heymann cautioned that it is not proven that all the various suspected cases in different countries were the same disease, saying experts cannot be certain of a link until it becomes clear whether the illness is caused by a virus or bacteria.
CAUSE STILL UNKNOWN
“The reason we are alarmed is because we do not know what is causing it. If this (is) ... a disease such as a new influenza, it could spread very rapidly throughout the world,” Heymann told Reuters in an interview.
But in a hopeful note, Heymann said that Chinese health authorities reported that some alternative treatments show promise in treating the disease.
“The Chinese have indicated that they have tried antibiotics but that these have not been effective. ... But they have been able to support them (patients) with respirators where necessary and other interventions which seem to have worked,” he said.
The WHO is asking China for more information on the treatments. It was also not known how many of the 305 people that China says fell ill had already recovered after the disease peaked there in early February. The authorities say five people died there.
On Saturday, the WHO issued a worldwide travel alert and warned that the highly contagious disease posed “a worldwide threat.” Airports and hospitals around the world immediately went on high alert for carriers of the mysterious disease.
The travel alert was issued as reports came of two deaths from severe pneumonia in Canada and a suspected case in Germany.
Until then, suspected cases had been largely limited to China, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Two people are also in isolation in a Geneva hospital after developing high fevers and breathing problems. Other symptoms may include coughing, headache, muscular stiffness, loss of appetite, confusion, rash and diarrhea also possible, according to WHO.
BRITAIN REPORTS FIRST SUSPECTED CASE
A spokesman for Britain’s Health Ministry in London told Reuters on Monday that authorities there had a suspected case of the disease. The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the victim was a man who had recently traveled to Hong Kong, but provided no other details.
All those affected in Europe and Canada had recently been to southeast Asia or had a relative that had.
In Hong Kong on Monday, Health Secretary Yeoh Eng-kiong said that 83 people had contracted the “atypical pneumonia.” That figure was nearly double the number reported on Sunday, but Eng-kiong said that the initial report omitted non-hospital personnel who had contracted the illness and did not indicate that it was spreading that rapidly.
At the same time, she said that all 83 infections in the former British colony were believed to have resulted from exposure to one individual with the illness.
In the United States, health officials are analyzing blood samples obtained from victims in hopes of pinpointing the cause.
No cases have yet been reported in the United States, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention activated its emergency operations center for only the third time ever and hospitals across the country were put on alert.
‘AN EVOLVING PROBLEM’
“This is an evolving problem,” Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, said Sunday.
U.S. military officials also were concerned.
Pentagon sources told NBC News on Monday that there was no indication that any U.S. military personnel had come down with the sickness, but said military officials had been briefed on its symptoms and have been put on alert to keep an eye out for any signs of the virus among U.S. troops.
The illness is believed to spread “person to person” and have an incubation period of two to seven days, Gerberding said. “There is no evidence to suggest that this can be spread through brief contact or assemblages of large people,” she added.
Gerberding said the CDC is working to get more samples for its labs to analyze. Tests could take several days, but officials said they hope to have initial results ready by early this week.
Although the CDC is keeping “an open mind” about bioterrorism, Gerberding said the mystery illness appears to be naturally occurring.
The CDC’s emergency operations center — which previously handled the 2001 anthrax attacks and last year’s explosion of the West Nile virus — has been activated to coordinate a multinational effort to combat the new disease.
The CDC had received calls about potential cases that are being investigated, Gerberding said.
“Right now, it’s an issue for travelers returning from parts of Asia, we’re not seeing a spread” in the United States, Gerberding said. “We’ve taken steps to put the health system on alert.”
Two people who had been in the United States are believed to have developed the illness. A doctor from Singapore was taken off a New York-to-Singapore flight in Frankfurt, Germany, on Saturday and quarantined. In addition, a woman, hospitalized in Canada with similar symptoms, had traveled to Atlanta on business shortly before becoming ill.
DOCTOR REMOVED FROM FLIGHT
The doctor from Singapore, who treated some of the first pneumonia patients in the island republic, showed symptoms of pneumonia and was being treated with antibiotics, Dr. Hanns-Reinhardt Brodt said at a news conference. X-rays and lab tests showed the man’s condition had “worsened slightly,” Brodt said. The man’s mother-in-law had a high fever but no other symptoms, while his pregnant wife showed no signs of infection, Brodt said.
The man had recently attended a medical conference in New York, but it was not immediately known exactly when he was in the city.
The remaining 220 passengers on the flight were also quarantined in Frankfurt, Germany, on Saturday. By the end of the day, more than half had been released after authorities determined their risk of infection was “extremely low.”
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Health officials across the United States were warned to be on the lookout for patients with symptoms of the illness.
While no formal travel restrictions are in place, U.S. health officials said travelers should consider postponing trips to countries at risk. Travelers entering the United States after visiting any of the Asian areas affected by the illness are being given cards alerting them to watch for symptoms.
“During your recent travel, you may have been exposed to cases of severe acute respiratory disease syndrome. You should monitor your health for at least 7 days. If you become ill with fever accompanied by cough or difficulty in breathing, you should consult a physician,” the card advises.
The spread of the disease has alarmed travelers around the world. In Hong Kong’s international airport, many people arriving from Taiwan, Singapore and elsewhere were wearing surgical masks.
“There’s nothing we can do about it, so we have to take precautions,” one visitor told Hong Kong’s Cable TV.
Cathay Pacific airline said it had ordered staff not to check in passengers showing symptoms of respiratory illness and to refer them for medical assessment.
CASES SPREAD IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Numbers of suspected cases in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore and Taiwan have been rising steadily. WHO said it had also received reports of cases in Indonesia and Thailand, but gave no further details.
An American businessman died in Hong Kong on Thursday after being flown from Hanoi with respiratory problems.
In Canada, Toronto Public Health officials said a woman died of the illness on March 5 and her adult son died on March 13 after arriving recently from Hong Kong. Four of their relatives were hospitalized.
The illness could be a new strain of flu or even an exotic virus passed from animals to people, a health official said Sunday. Probably the most feared by health experts, however, would be a new and deadly strain of flu.
“Certainly influenza is on the minds of many people,” said Heymann, WHO’s communicable diseases chief .
Lab tests have ruled out some varieties of flu as well as some viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever. However, many other possibilities remain, Heymann said.
Those include “a new strain of influenza” or such exotic diseases as the closely related Hendra and Nipah viruses - both newly recognized, causing flu-like symptoms and capable of being spread from animals to people.
“If it really is the flu, it could be we have a new organism that could cause a pandemic,” said Dr. R. Bradley Sack, director of Johns Hopkins’ international travel clinic.
The last major pandemic happened in 1918-19 when up to 40 million people in the world died from a Spanish flu outbreak. Flu outbreaks in 1957-58 and 1968-69 killed over a million each time.
Because the virulent strains tend to emerge every 30 years or so, health officials long have feared the world is overdue for a major flu attack.
Investigators suspect a virus is involved, because victims do not seem to respond well to standard antibiotics, which kill only bacteria, and because their white blood counts drop. That typically happens with viral infections but not bacterial ones.
Few drugs exist for treating viral diseases and often they must run their course until brought under control by the body’s natural immune defenses.
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