Posted on 04/30/2003 6:11:51 PM PDT by CathyRyan
WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal officials are stockpiling ventilators, training health workers and encouraging hospitals to create isolation wards in case the SARS virus spreads in the United States the way it has in China, Canada and elsewhere.
Some of these efforts were underway as part of the government's attempt to prepare for a possible bioterrorism attack, while others are a reaction to the spread of the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome.
The National Institutes of Health is preparing to study some U.S. patients to try to figure out how long they are contagious and to see if experimental treatments might help. One would give the very ill a protein culled from the blood of someone who recovered.
There are 52 probable cases in the United States, and the NIH will offer some of those people the option of coming to its hospital in Bethesda, Md., for the research.
"There's an awful lot we don't know" about SARS that can only be learned in a specialized research centre, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Top officials at the Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday that the country so far has done a good job preventing the spread of SARS in the United States, but many local officials would not be prepared if the virus took off in their communities.
"I don't think there is any country, including our own, that is right now capable of massive infusion of individuals who are severely ill, requiring intensive care under isolation," Fauci said.
Worldwide, there have been more than 5,400 cases of the highly contagious respiratory disease, with at least 375 deaths. In addition to the 52 probable U.S. cases, more than 200 other cases in the country are considered suspicious. No one in the United States has died from SARS.
Federal health officials are preparing in case that changes over the coming months - or in case SARS disappears, only to return again and spread through the United States.
The HHS is buying 3,000 ventilators to supplement those now available in the national stockpile. About 100,000 ventilators are operating in the country, with about 80 per cent usually in use, and many as 95 to 100 per cent taken during the flu season.
Also, federal officials planned meetings with their Canadian counterparts Thursday to learn how they were able to contain the virus.
Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Canadians have taken steps that go beyond what U.S. hospitals are used to in handling infectious diseases: transferring patients from one hospital to another, closing some hospitals, cancelling elective surgeries and furloughing health care workers who were exposed to SARS patients.
U.S. braces for SARS outbreakYeah, hardly. SARS should brace itself for a U.S. outbreak. We are so going to kick that virus's ass. It'll be like, Baghdad, and our CDC will be like, a marine division on the roll.
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