| A mysterious illness that quickly develops into an unusually severe and deadly pneumonia has stumped doctors so far although labs have been working around the clock to identify it, world health officials said on Monday.
The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued travel advisories to people visiting Southeast Asia and asked doctors and travelers to be alert for the symptoms -- which include a fever that comes on quickly and a dry cough.
The disease, known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, may have killed as many as nine people and infected 170 others although officials will not know for sure until they can identify what causes it.
Most cases have been in China, Hong Kong and Vietnam, with 20 cases in Singapore, eight cases in Canada and possible cases in Britain and Germany.
It looks like influenza, which kills up to 500,000 people around the world every year. But tests of fluids and tissues of patients have so far not turned up influenza virus. Nor have tests been able to produce bacteria.
"It could be a brand-new microbe," Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview. "It doesn't look like something that already exists."
But U.S. health officials said they did not so far have a great deal of material to work with, either. Samples from patients are scarce and often too old to provide reliable tests, CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding said.
NOVEMBER OUTBREAK COULD PROVIDE CLUES
WHO and CDC officials have been trying to find out more about an outbreak of pneumonia in southern China that sickened more than 300 people in November.
Gerberding said while the illness is contagious, it does not seem to have been transmitted by casual contact -- such as being on an airplane with a patient.
"We know the disease is limited so far to people who have had very close contact with cases," Gerberding told a news conference. "Most have been health care personnel."
The CDC issued a travel warning on Saturday, urging travelers to any affected countries to be on the lookout for flu-like symptoms. Doctors treating anyone with fever, cough and similar symptoms should ask if they have traveled to Singapore, China or Vietnam and if they have, quarantine them until more is known.
"So far, cases are limited to individuals who either lived in the parts of Asia that have been affected or who recently traveled to those areas," Gerberding said.
She said labs at the CDC were working around the clock on specimens, as were labs around the world.
"The reason we are alarmed is because we do not know what is causing it," Dr. David Heymann, head of communicable diseases at WHO, said in an interview. "If this be a disease such as a new influenza, it could spread very rapidly throughout the world."
SIGNS POINT TO VIRUS
Doctors in Canada, where two of eight suspected victims have died, said they believe it is caused by a virus. "If it were a bacteria we would have identified it by now. But all possibilities remain open," Dr. Howard Njoo, director general of the Center for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control in Ottawa, told a news conference.
U.S. and Canadian officials both discounted the possibility of a deliberate bioterrorist attack.
Gerberding said no official cases had been reported in the United States. "It will not be a surprise to us if we identified cases in the United States," Gerberding said. She said there were 14 suspect cases that officials were keeping an eye on but she doubted if any were related to the outbreak.
"It certainly reminds us that we do live in a global village and emerging problems in one part of the world will soon be emerging problems for all of us," she said. (Additional reporting by Rajiv Sekhri in Toronto, Patricia Reaney in London, Richard Waddington in Geneva)
Source: Reuters | |
