Experts Say SARS Has Potential to Become Major Health Threat
(Panel testifies on SARS before Senate committee) (640)
By Kristofer Angle
Washington File Science Writer
Washington -- There is a very real possibility that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus could continue to spread and evolve into a "major health threat," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "It's real and it's serious."
"We're not really sure where (the virus is) going to go, because we are truly in the middle of the evolution of an epidemic," Fauci told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions April 7.
"Every once in a while," Fauci said, "(viruses) evolve into a major public health threat, and others are little blips on the radar screen in that they stay confined to the time and the place when they initially emerged. With SARS, we know for sure that we're not dealing with just a blip on the radar screen."
SARS is believed to be caused by a type of coronavirus, which is only a single strand of RNA (ribonucleic acid). This point is of particular concern among the medical community because its structure makes it very easy to mutate.
"We're learning as we go," said Julie Gerberding, director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "It has the potential to spread very quickly, and we've seen that. And it has the potential to spread globally, we've seen that."
Gerberding said experts are especially concerned about so-called "hypertransmitters," or "superspreaders" of SARS. She added: "Some individuals may be especially infectious, they're especially contagious. It's always the chance that we'll be seeing a further spread of the infection here in this country just as it's been observed in Canada and elsewhere in the world."
Gerberding testified there is no known effective treatment for SARS, although the antiviral drug ribavirin is being tried. Gerberding said, however, "I think increasingly we're a little pessimistic that it's actually going to be a useful drug."
"There are no adequate therapies and no adequate vaccines," Fauci said. He added that this new virus is unlike anything he's seen.
Rresearch has already begun on a possible vaccine for SARS. The panel of experts, however, agreed that such a vaccine might be years away.
Gerberding further added that the biggest challenge right now is finding an effective diagnostics test. Symptoms of SARS in its early stages are consistent with the flu. This makes identifying and isolating SARS patients very difficult.
Also testifying before the Senate was David Heymann, executive director of Communicable Diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO). He said that the global response to SARS has been very good. "All countries are following our recommendations, and there's been a great rallying around this outbreak," he said.
Fauci noted that the helpful global response to SARS is a good test for responding to a possible biological terror attack. For example, he said major improvements in response capacity have been made since the anthrax attack in the United States in October 2001.
Gerberding advised U.S. citizens to avoid non-essential travel to the countries where SARS is especially problematic, namely Hong Kong, China and Singapore. "We don't want to alarm people unnecessarily, but we do want to express the fact that this is the beginning of a problem," Gerberding said.
Gerberding testified that the surgical masks, which have become widely used in Asia, are not a bad idea. But she added that CDC only recommends them for people in close contact with patients suffering from SARS.
Current figures place the worldwide SARS fatality rate at about 4 percent. As of April 8, 101 SARS related deaths have been confirmed. There are 148 potential cases in the United States.
For current information regarding SARS check the following Website: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/ (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)