The case for a coronavirus appears to be stronger than that for a paramyxovirus, which was the leading -- and only -- contender as the cause last week. "There's evidence [for a coronavirus] in a variety of forms," Gerberding said. " We can culture it. We can see it on an electron microscope in respiratory fluids, we have specific assays that are picking it up in a variety of tissues and specimens." The evidence also shows that one patient who had tested negative to coronavirus antibodies at the beginning of the illness developed antibodies and tested positive by the end of the illness. "This could still be an incidental finding, but that's looking increasingly doubtful," Gerberding said. "The challenge is, we have a pretty nonspecific illness and we are dealing with families of viruses that are ubiquitous." ttp://www.healthcentral.com/news/NewsFullText.cfm?id=512398
There are no treatments for illnesses caused by coronaviruses, but Gerberding said the U.S. Department of Defense was examining its existing arsenal of antivirals to see whether one would be effective against this particular bug.
Deadly virus infects five HK people who toured Beijing
HONG KONG, March 25 (Reuters) - Five people who returned to Hong Kong from a holiday in Beijing have contracted a mystery pneumonia virus which has killed more than 20 people around the world, a government spokesman said on Tuesday. In Hong Kong, where debate is raging over whether the government reacted quickly enough, an official said the latest victims were among a tour group of 39 to the Chinese capital. Six of their fellow travellers were in hospital and may have also been infected, the government spokesman said. "We are still tracing the source, where and how they were infected," he said. ttp://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP32122.htm
BEIJING, March 25 (Reuters) - Waiting rooms filled up at Beijing hospitals on Tuesday as fears of an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) grew despite the government remaining secretive about the deadly disease to avoid panic. The government insists there are no cases in Beijing, although one health official admitted two people from out of town had died of SARS in the city. One Chinese doctor estimated there might be as many as 100 cases in Beijing. "What I've heard is that many of those affected are doctors and nurses." One e-mail circulated anonymously said at least 12 had died at four Beijing hospitals.
SARS spreads to France The first case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a killer disease which has caused at least 17 deaths worldwide, has been detected in a patient in France, health officials said Monday.
"It is the first case in France," a spokesman for the department of health (DGS) told AFP. The infected man arrived in France on Sunday from Vietnam, where he is a medical worker at a French hospital in Hanoi, the official said.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/eastasia/view/35719/1/.html First it was a mad rush to buy vinegar. Then came the surgical masks. Now, building owners around Hong Kong are calling in engineering companies to disinfect air conditioning systems. Hong Kong is in the grip of a health scare stirred up by severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which has killed 10 people there but also brought an unexpected boom to a variety of small businesses as citizens scramble to avoid infection.
In Hong Kong on Sunday, China's health minister, Zhang Wenkang, told reporters that China would not be releasing any updated numbers until it was clear how SARS could be differentiated from routine pneumonia. Zhang said his government had provided detailed case data to the World Health Organization but requested that the Geneva body refrain from publicizing the number of cases. In Beijing today, however, WHO officials said that information was not sufficient and called once more on China to begin releasing a daily province-by-province breakdown on the numbers of suspected SARS cases. China is historically wary about releasing information that could reflect poorly on the government.
James Maguire, the chief of the epidemiology branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and a member of the WHO team in China, said China's input could be crucial to figuring out the arc of the disease. ttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21033-2003Mar24.html