What's Next After SARS?

▪ 2004

Introduction

by Brian J. Ford

      In November 2002 Huang Xingchu was working as a chef at a restaurant in Shenzhen, a thriving boomtown in China's Guangdong province, close to the Hong Kong border. Like many restaurants in southern China, Huang's establishment served up special dishes based on exotic game. One of these specialties was the civet, a catlike carnivorous animal sold openly at farmers' markets and slaughtered directly on the restaurant's premises. On December 5 Huang awoke feeling listless and uncomfortable. Soon he developed a fever of 39 °C (102 °F) and was finding it difficult to breathe. On December 15 his family took him to the People's Hospital in Heyuan City, and two days later he was transferred to the Guangzhou Military Hospital. At Guangzhou, Huang's throat was so constricted that he had to be fitted with a breathing tube. The illness eventually passed, and on Jan. 10, 2003, Huang returned home, fully recovered. Within a few months the chef from Shenzhen was to become famous as China's first reported case of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), a highly contagious and often fatal illness caused by a mutant coronavirus, a type of virus usually associated with the common cold. Genetic studies now indicate that the virus probably mutated from its normal nonthreatening form after passing to humans from exotic animals such as the civet, the very creature served up as healthful fare at Huang's restaurant.

Face Masks and Quarantine.

      Back at Heyuan City, nine members of the People's Hospital staff had caught Huang's virus, and soon the mysterious “atypical pneumonia” appeared in five other cities in Guangdong. The authorities reacted by demolishing the restaurant where Huang had worked, by disinfecting public places and vehicles, and, in February 2003, by assuring the public that the “unidentified virus” had been contained. By then, however, it had crossed the frontier. From Guangdong the virus was taken by an infected doctor to Hong Kong, and from Hong Kong it was quickly carried throughout East Asia and to Toronto. Late in February I arrived in southern China on a lecture tour. There were face masks on many of the people, and I saw even more as I traveled across Japan. Face masks are often worn in East Asia, as protection partly against infection but mainly against traffic fumes and tree pollen. Nevertheless, many more face masks than usual were in evidence now, and the populace was avoiding many public places.

 It was only a matter of time before global air travelers carried the virus to the rest of the world. (See Map—>.) On March 12, 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially identified SARS as a distinct disease threat. Health authorities around the world responded by instituting strict control measures, including prohibitions on travel to and from affected countries as well as quarantines of hospitals and other places where persons were found to be infected. In Singaporean airports infrared sensors were installed to identify disembarking passengers with elevated temperatures that might indicate SARS.

      The emergency measures did the job. On April 28 SARS in Vietnam was declared to have been contained (that is, no new infections had been seen in at least 20 days). On June 23 and July 2, Hong Kong and Toronto were declared safe, and on July 5, with the last remaining country, Taiwan, showing no new infections, the epidemic was officially over. By that time more than 8,000 cases—most of them in mainland China and Hong Kong—had been reported, and 774 people had died from the disease, 299 in Hong Kong alone.

Germs Without Borders.

      In July 2001 I spoke in Chicago to an international group of microscopists. My topic was emergent diseases in the new millennium, and the talk ended with a warning that air transportation could carry new pathogens to unsuspecting populations on opposite sides of the world. The risks seemed real. Airliners confine people in a closed environment, recirculate their expired air, and take passengers to communities unexposed to many foreign diseases. All communities harbour antibodies to infections that commonly occur there, but such resistance is usually absent from people in distant parts of the world. In an irony of modern life, Westerners are now vulnerable to exotic infections from the East, just as peoples in Asia, Africa, and the Americas were once devastated by the smallpox and measles carried to them by European explorers. One day Westerners, like the Japanese, may be seen wearing face masks in public places.

      Coronaviruses infect many animals (e.g., chickens, pigs, rats, and turkeys, in addition to civets), and in humans they cause about 15% of all colds. Yet a vaccine to prevent the common cold has never been found. In fact, the best preventive measures in the SARS outbreak of 2002–03 were the time-honoured quarantine of contacts and careful personal hygiene. What other diseases are waiting in the wings? How does the disease spread in a modern world?

Waiting in the Wings.

      In the 19th and early 20th centuries, tuberculosis, or consumption, killed most of the Brontë family as well as John Keats, Frédéric Chopin, Anton Chekhov, and Franz Kafka. Since the introduction of antibiotics in the mid-20th century, tales of consumption and TB sanatoriums have passed from the developed world, but now drug-resistant strains of the tubercle bacillus have been introduced into the West through air travel. Outbreaks of dengue fever, Lyme disease, trench fever, and West Nile virus have occurred far from their places of origin. Korean hemorrhagic fever, caused by the hantavirus and first recognized by Western scientists during the Korean War in the 1950s, has turned up in South America and more recently in the United States, notably California. Finally, monkeypox, a virus related to smallpox that was never before known outside Africa, spread to humans in the United States in 2003 through the importation for pets of exotic animals such as African pouched rats.

Direction for the Future.

      If viruses are proved to spread through enclosed spaces—such as planes and trains—then new precautions may be needed. We may need to filter and sterilize circulated air, and sensors are already being used to identify passengers with raised temperatures.

      Both the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese governments came under criticism from abroad and at home for their lack of openness during the first stages of the SARS outbreak. Other governments were just as reluctant to cause alarm and lose income from tourists. In the future we will have to require a more proactive stance and greater “transparency” on the part of health authorities. In addition, the role of WHO probably will have to become even more important in maintaining the health of the global population.

      In any event, massive epidemics are less likely to occur than some people imagine. SARS has largely been contained, even after most commentators suggested it would soon spread worldwide—though of course it has not gone away. One case emerged in Singapore in September 2003; it was managed quickly and with openness by the Singaporean authorities. Such prompt response, along with stricter standards of personal hygiene, higher levels of surveillance, and a readiness to resort to quarantine when necessary, will help us to keep on top of the world's emerging diseases.

Brian J. Ford is a biologist and lecturer and is the author of Future of Food.

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