March 28 —
In its first warning that suggests a deadly flu-like illness can
be spread on airplanes, the World Health Organization said Thursday
that passengers with symptoms of the disease or who may have been
exposed to it shouldn't be allowed to fly.
Airlines flying out of cities where the mystery disease is
spreading should question passengers at check-in desks for signs of
severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, the global health agency
said.
"If the passengers are sick, health workers will be recommending
to the airline that they not board the plane," said Dr. David
Heymann, WHO's infectious diseases chief.
The advice from the WHO which can only make recommendations to
governments is directed at flights leaving Toronto; Singapore;
Hanoi, Vietnam; Hong Kong; Taiwan; Beijing, Shanghai and the Chinese
province of Guangdong, where the earliest cases of SARS
occurred.
While suspected cases have been reported in more than a dozen
countries, the illness is not considered to be spreading in most
communities. So far, the WHO says 1,408 people have fallen ill with
SARS and 53 people have died; that doesn't include a death Thursday
that Hong Kong officials were reporting.
The United States has 51 suspected cases, said Dr. Julie
Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
The death rate has remained around 4 percent since the outbreak
began, experts said. There have been three deaths in Canada and none
in the United States.
Thursday's advice from the WHO was the latest broad attempt at
slowing the spread.
"The recommendation still remains that there should be no
interruption in travel or trade, but we're shifting a little bit
more responsibility to countries where there are these infected
areas," Heymann said.
However, the CDC's Gerberding encouraged Americans to defer
vacations to Asia if they were able.
"This is now a global epidemic and potentially a global pandemic"
if it's not quickly brought under control, she said.
The WHO has teams of infectious disease experts in the affected
countries. But some places continue to have problems containing the
disease, which apparently got its start last winter in Guangdong
province in China. It is believed to be a virus and there is no
treatment for it, although medicines are being tested.
In Hong Kong, where at least 10 people have died, the government
said Thursday it would quarantine more than 1,000 people and close
its schools. Weekend concerts by the Rolling Stones were
postponed.
In Ontario, Canada's most populous province, health authorities
declared a state of emergency and called for a 10-day quarantine of
people who had visited a hospital where the outbreak spread a number
that could be in the thousands.
Ontario health officials said Thursday they had bought all the
high-grade surgical masks available in Canada to protect medical
workers.
"One hundred thousand were delivered yesterday, 200,000 will be
delivered today and the last 40,000 were purchased early this
morning," said Dr. Colin DCunha, Ontarios Commissioner of Public
Health.
Canadian Health Minister Anne McLellan said she is taking the WHO
screening recommendation "very seriously" and her office has already
started working with the airlines.
Health officials already knew the disease had spread beyond Asia
by international air travel on March 15, when the Canadian cases
turned up. But at the time it was not clear whether those people
were sick on the plane or got sick after coming home.
"Now we know that there are people who are traveling when they
are sick," Heymann said. "There have been more and more cases who
have traveled on airplanes and we aren't yet 100 percent sure of how
this disease is spreading."
He said experts remain convinced the infection is spread only by
very close contact through coughing and sneezing.
However, there may be people with a less severe bout of the
illness, or some who are infected but showing no symptoms, who are
transmitting it, Heymann said.
The new airline advisory also recommends a tougher approach on
board if the flight crew detects someone becoming noticeably ill
with fever and breathing problems.
"The passenger should be as isolated as possible from others and
should be asked to wear a protective mask," WHO spokesman Dick
Thompson said.
Sick passengers should also be assigned their own toilets on
board, he added. The aircraft captain should radio ahead to the
airport to alert health authorities and the passenger should be
quarantined, the new recommendations say.
The WHO is not suggesting all air travelers wear masks, as some
in Asia have done recently.
Heymann said that although new suspected SARS cases are added to
the official list every day, the disease is not spreading any faster
than anticipated. "I think the control measures that are going on
are checking the spread of this," he said.
It appeared Thursday that scientists were zeroing in more
precisely on the cause of the illness, which several labs report is
a new type of coronavirus. That virus is second only to rhinovirus
as the cause of the common cold.
However, there is some evidence that a second germ, the
paramyxovirus, could also be at play, perhaps in tandem with the
coronavirus, WHO experts said.
"I think we're closer to the real answer, but the trump card is
what is paramyxovirus doing? Is it all related and that's what has
to be sorted out," Heymann said.
Although no treatment is known to work, most patients seem to get
better with normal hospital care. About 10 percent fare badly, but
many of those have other illness such as diabetes or heart disease,
which complicates their care.
On the Net:
World Health Organization's SARS site:
photo credit
and caption:
Church members console the
mother of Simon Loh, a pastor who died of severe acute
respiratory syndrome, or SARS, after having to identify her
sons's body at the mortuary at the Singapore General Hospital
on Thursday, March 27, 2003. Loh, the second Singaporean to
die of the disease, contracted SARS after visiting a hospital
to pray for a patient infected with the illness. (AP
Photo/Wong Maye-e)
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