Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome sample essay

SARS stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome, which is an “atypical pneumonia that first appeared in November 2002” in People’s Republic of China. The cause of this disease is a SARS coronavirus. Those infected with this disease must be immediately isolated and provided proper treatment. SARS is a relatively new disease that doctors do not know much about. People have to have very close contact with someone who is infected with SARS to get infected also. The majority of people infected with SARS have either been hospital workers, which took care of the people infected, or a member of a victim's family. The way it can be spread is when someone infected sneezes, coughs, or come in contact with other fluids like blood.

People who are infected outside of Asia have all either recently traveled to Asia or have come in contact with someone that returned from Asia. It has been reported in Asia, North America, and Europe.

Already SARS has affected people and even cities in one way or another. One way that it has affected cities is that cities that have people that have SARS have had less visitors coming into their country. What I mean by this is that places that have parts of society that have SARS have had somewhat of a recession in the tourist industry. Take Toronto for example, the economy of the city is falling. Also the mayor of Toronto has given out offers for people who can come to Canada. What does one mean by offers? One means that the mayor has asked companies that are affected by tourism to lower prices to draw people into the city. People and cities weren’t the only one’s affected by SARS. In Toronto Chinese restaurants have had less business because SARS has been said to possibly been from China. This also affected Toronto’s economy in a different manner.

SARS has many symptoms. This disease is similar to pneumonia or the flu. People would begin getting high fever at least 104 degrees. The fever is sometimes associated with chills or other symptoms including headaches, general feeling of discomfort and body aches. After 2-7 days, SARS patients might acquire a dry cough that might progress to the point where insufficient oxygen is getting to the blood. Patients experience shortness of breath or other breathing problems, stiff or achy muscles, loss appetite, rashes, and diarrhea. 10-20% of cases, patients will require mechanical ventilation. If you are exposed to SARS it typically takes 2 to 7 days to have the effects; however, isolated reports have suggested an incubation period as long as 10 days.

Medical treatment that is currently recommended is that SARS patients should receive that same treatment that would be used for any patient with serious community-acquired atypical pneumonia of unknown cause. At present the most effective treatment regimen is unknown. In several locations therapy has included antivirals such as oseltamivir or ribavirin. Steroids also have been given orally or intravenously to patients in combination with ribavirin and other antimicrobials. In the absence of controlled clinical trials the efficacy of these regimens remains unknown. Testing of ribavirin and other antiviral drugs are being done to see if any effective treatment can be found.

A new found knowledge leads scientist closer to a hypothesis that will find the cause of SARS. Scientists have detected a previously unrecognized coronavirus in patients with SARS. However, other viruses are still under investigation as potential causes. A coronavirus are a group of viruses that have a halo or crown-like (corona) appearance when viewed under a microscope. These viruses are a common cause of mild to moderate upper-respiratory illness in humans and are associated with some diseases in animals. They can also survive in the environment for as long as three hours. Scientists came to this hypothesis by isolating this virus from the tissues and then observing that this virus does belong to the family of coronaviruses but it differs from other family members. They also found that people who have SARS were recently infected with this virus. Therefore scientists came up with the hypothesis that this new coronavirus is the cause of SARS. Coronaviruses usually only cause mild illness in humans, so it may seem like it cannot cause a potentially life-threatening disease. Right now there is not enough information to determine the full range of illness that it might cause. With this new information treatment has not been changed, but scientists are working with the new coronavirus to test it against various antiviral drugs to see if an effective treatment can be found.

Another suggestion is that the cause of SARS may be a paramyxovirus. A paramyxovirus is any of a group of viruses that contain RNA and are similar to but larger and more variable in size than the related myxovirus. The paramyxovirus include the Sendai virus, the parainfluenza viruses and the viruses that cause measles and mumps. These laboratories are still investigating the possibility that a paramyxovirus is the cause of SARS.

There have been many people infected by SARS. It has infected more than 8,100 people since the disease in Guangdong Province in southern China. A total of 696 have died, according to the World Health Organization. Last week Taiwan battled the past growing outbreak of the disease, said SARS was now effectively under control, as 15 new probable infections were reported. The number of new cases on the island peaked at 65 Thursday. Officials asked residents of Taiwan this week to take their own temperatures and those with children, twice a day for the duration of the diseases incubation period. The incubation period is 10 days.

Hong Kong, being the second largest outbreak after Beijing, reported a single new SARS case and one death on Monday May 26, 2003. The new infection was of a nurse who was thought to have contracted the disease from a colleague in a hospital dormitory. The fatality was a 45-year-old man. He had no history of chronic disease; officials say that the death increased the total number of fatalities in Hong Kong to 267. The new infection brought the total infected in Hong Kong, to 1, 726 people. Since the start of the outbreak there have been new infections. On Friday May 23, 2003, Hong Kong was removed from the list of areas where the World Health Organization advises against travel. Hong Kong has a total of 109 patients under hospital care.

After a few days, Russia got terrified of making trades with China. The reason is because of the illness of SARS. These days, fewer Chinese amble along Blagoveshchensk's wide boulevards, gamble in casinos or pedal lace, mattresses and television sets at the local markets. Russians don't horde to the markets as they did before, in spite of the low prices. Vendor Jian Van Sui, says, "It's not profitable to trade at the market any more; there are few buyers. They are probably afraid of the pneumonia.”

The descending slide began when a city worker, Denis Soinikov, was hospitalized at the beginning of May with a dry cough, high temperature and complex breathing. Soinikov, who had been living in a hotel where about half the residents were Chinese, was suspected of having Russia's first case of SARS. "Doctors have been unable to definitively diagnose his illness because Russia received a SARS virus sample only last week", said Lyubov Voropayeva, a spokeswoman for Russia's Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance Center.

Still, as a precautionary measure, public health officials ordered all public and private employees working in crowded places, such as buses, banks and markets, to wear masks and use rubber gloves to count money. Meanwhile, China is tackling a unique challenge: spitting is a longstanding Chinese tradition, and spitting potentially spreads SARS. Liu says, "No one would dare spit in here these days-you'd get fined a lot and one one's paying wages." As noted anyone that happens to spit will get fined a large amount to pay. The Chinese government has contributed a new weapon to the world's war against SARS; little white plastic spit bags that are handed out in parks and malls, the hardware for a wide scale anti-spitting campaign. The bags say, "Spitting on the ground is dangerous to your health and spit contains infectious diseases. But with one small bag in your hands your health will always be invincible."

China's President Hu Jintao said on Wednesday May 28, 2003 that China could maintain the pace of economic growth despite the impact of the SARS outbreak. In his speech to student in Moscow he says, "We can definitely overcome these temporary difficulties and win the war against SARS, while maintaining the pace of economic development and continuing to contribute to the promotion regional and global economic growth." China economy grew 8.9 percent in April from a year earlier, down from 9.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter as SARS dragged on retail sales and foreign investment.

As you can see, Sever Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is a very unique and an exclusive new disease. SARS is a very dangerous disease, but now that we know more about SARS, we can try to protect and prevent ourselves by this deadly disease. There are many things that China is doing to prevent this disease of spreading even more. China is taking very well care of its people. The rates of cases are lowering therefore we will hopefully not see much of this disease anymore.

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia contributors (2006). Severe acute respiratory syndrome. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 12, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/ index.php?title=Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome&oldid=48213226.

2. SARS. (2004). Star online. Retrieved April 12, 2006 from http://thestar.com.my/SARS/story.asp?file=/ 2003/5/27/SARS/russia27&sec=SARS

3. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. (2004). SarsWatch.org. Retrieved April 12, 2006 from http://www.sarswatch.org/
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