Don't ask don't tell is shifting into high gear. It's becoming increasingly obvious that some officials just don't want to know about SARS CoV and comments that the Singapore post-doc should not have been tested clearly show who is in the driver's seat.
WHO said that SARS CoV doesn't exist in humans and as long as testing is limited, they can maintain the illusion a little longer.
I believe that WHO has now seen the Winnipeg data and since there isn't an obvious scientific explanation for the SARS CoV sequences, WHO will just reduce testing.
The spin goes on and on.
>===== Original Message From "Henry L Niman, PhD" <henry_niman@hms.harvard.edu> =====
Canada to Limit SARS Testing
Unless a New Outbreak Occurs
Goal Is to Reduce Risks
Of False-Positive Results
Triggering Health Panic
By ELENA CHERNEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
TORONTO -- Canadian health officials, seeking to prevent imperfect laboratory tests from triggering a SARS panic, plan to restrict SARS testing on patients with respiratory symptoms unless there is another outbreak.
A cluster of summer colds at a British Columbia nursing home attracted international attention last month when Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory found evidence of a coronavirus that it said bore striking similarities to the coronavirus that caused last spring's deadly outbreak of
severe acute respiratory syndrome. Now, Canada's Ministry of Health is developing a policy that would steer Canadian scientists away from doing SARS tests on most patients.
"We're living in a world where there is no SARS," said Arlene King, director of Health Canada's division for immunization and respiratory infections.
A lab worker in Singapore is believed to have a mild case, possibly linked to exposure in the lab. Since tests continue to produce false-positive results even though the disease isn't circulating right now, public-health agencies
around the world are seeking to avoid sparking hysteria, Dr. King said.
"The public health, economic and social consequences of overcalling SARS are profound," Dr. King said. "Everyone is struggling with this issue."
The Canadian protocol, which isn't yet final, would instruct labs to test for SARS only if physicians were puzzled by an unexplained cluster of severe illness, or, in an isolated case, if the patient showed the hallmark symptoms of the ailment, which causes an atypical pneumonia and had some connection to parts of China where the malady potentially could be re-emerging.
The reaction in Asia to the isolated SARS case in Singapore illustrates the dangers of aggressive testing for the virus in individual cases with mild symptoms, World Health Organization spokesman Dick Thompson said. The case in
Singapore, which is believed to be a "mild SARS coronavirus infection" is an "extremely isolated" case that hasn't spread, Mr. Thompson said. Yet it has sent shudders through Singapore's stock market and caused anxiety throughout
the region. |
