SARS Confirmed, China Acts on Civets

Probably the majority of Americans weren't affected by the outbreak of SARS last year. Yet, it would be foolish to ignore the implications. All it takes is ONE COUNTRY to not take an outbreak of a new virus seriously to result in a world wide outbreak.

Because of the secrecy of China's government, a doctor who practiced in the Guangdong province and had treated cases of this "atypical pneumonia" that everyone was denying was a problem, traveled to Hong Kong for a wedding. At his hotel, while waiting for an elevator, or in an elevator, he transmitted the virus to the other guests staying on his floor. From there, the virus went to Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan, and Canada.

As you know, it was months after the disease first appeared before China dealt with the problem, which was traced back to exotic food sold in Guangdong markets.

Unfortunately, we now have the first new confirmed case of SARS that was not a result of lab workers handling the virus.

During the SARS epidemic last year, the Chinese government had imposed a temporary ban on the civets' sale but lifted the restrictions once the outbreak subsided. The civet is the Himalayan, or masked, palm civet, which resembles a weasel and is related to the mongoose.

Now they've decided to kill all civet cats in captivity.

The Chinese government's decision on Monday to start killing all civet cats in captivity in Guangdong Province is belated and only partly counters the government's tolerance of the sale of the animals in markets, a SARS expert for the World Health Organization said.

So, they banned the sale of civets during the outbreak, let the sale resume, and now that we have a confirmed case they're going to kill all the civet cats. Should we feel better? Hardly.

First, the confirmed case says he hasn't had any contact with civets.

Many rats found in his apartment building are being tested for SARS.

Civets? Rats? We had this outbreak that killed thousands, devastated economies and airlines. Have we figured out what the problem is?

SARS is believed to have first jumped from an animal species to humans in Guangdong Province in November 2002. Dr. Stöhr and some other scientists have criticized China for not having conducted the comprehensive studies that are needed to determine the source of the SARS virus in nature and how the virus is transmitted from animals to other species, as well as to humans.

Such studies should have included putting infected civets found in Guangdong in cages with a variety of uninfected species of animals to determine how and with what frequency they transmit SARS, Dr. Stöhr said, adding, "All these studies are long overdue."

A few studies have been conducted, have been but not in a systematic way, Dr. Stöhr said. Chinese scientists, he said, took 5,000 samples last year from about 100 animal species and isolated viruses from some. The results have not been published.

In experiments, scientists at Hong Kong University are injecting the civet SARS virus into monkeys to help determine its virulence for other species, said Dr. David Ho, who directs the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan. He also directed a joint AIDS-SARS laboratory at Hong Kong University.

Dr. Stöhr said culling the civet population "needs to be done with utmost care" to prevent infection among workers who kill the animals, "and combined with scientific investigations," to take samples of blood and other tissues "so health officials can be ready to answer questions if new cases occur after the animals are killed."

Last year, scientists found SARS virus in human feces. Scientists in Hong Kong have said they have found large virus amounts in civet feces, raising questions about how often SARS may be transmitted through feces to humans and among them.

The truth is, we don't know how many animals carry SARS, so how in the world do we expect to prevent it? If it's not just civet cats, it won't help to kill the cats, now will it?

It seems pretty pointless to me to point a finger at China, and say "They haven't done the research. It's long overdue."

I don't think we can depend on one country when it comes to new diseases. If there was research that needed to be done, even if it needed to be done within China, doesn't WHO have the authority to make sure something is being done about it? SARS may not be the worst disease we face, but the implications for a true global epidemic are frightening.