Posted on 03/16/2003 12:15:19 AM PST by sarcasm
ATLANTA -- The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention activated its emergency operations center for only the third time ever in response to reports of mysterious pneumonia-like illness that has caused at least four deaths.
No cases of the illness have been identified in the United States, health officials said. But a doctor believed to be infected was taken off a New York-to-Singapore flight in Germany on Saturday and quarantined.
CDC officials tried to reassure Americans on Saturday that - although the illness has sickened more than 150 people in seven countries - it appears to be contagious only in close contact, such as among family members and hospital workers.
"There is no evidence to suggest that this can be spread through brief contact of assemblages of large numbers of people," CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said.
The growing list of countries reporting cases of the illness include China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Dr. James Hughes, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, said the CDC has dispatched four staff members to Hanoi and its chief of influenza epidemiology to Hong Kong. Another staff member is en route to Hong Kong, with one more en route to Taiwan, he said.
Doctors do not know what causes the illness - even whether it is a bacteria or virus.
The CDC's emergency operations center has extensive computer and mapping capabilities and is used to coordinate information from other countries and international health organizations. It was used last year during the outbreak of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus and during the anthrax attacks of 2001
If this thing balloons to 10,000 cases in the next 10 days were talking Black Death replication at that point.
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