WHO accepts 'more deadly' Sars findings
The World Health Organisation (WHO) today accepted a leading scientist’s findings that the Sars bug, which is causing panic worldwide, is more deadly than first thought.
Professor Roy Anderson, of Imperial College London, said he had found that the pneumonia-like virus killed 10% of those infected.
The WHO had reported that the disease was thought to kill between 5% or 6% of those who contracted it.
But Prof Anderson, a leading authority on infectious diseases, said he had conducted a more in-depth analysis on latest WHO figures. His results will be published in full next week in a medical journal.
“If one looks carefully at the WHO figures on mortality and recovery rates, it is running, unfortunately, at 10%,” he said.
Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the WHO’s communicable disease section, said: “We have not seen the report so we could not comment except to say that this is a top class professional and any figure he commits himself to is likely to be as close as possible to accurate.”
Prof Anderson’s study, based on about 1,400 cases that have occurred in Hong Kong, is also expected to report that Sars remained infectious much longer than other viruses.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said lessons still had to be learned about how best to prevent the spread of Sars.
“We have got a long way to go to learn how clinically to better manage this disease,” he said.
However, he added that some of the “doom and gloom predictions” about the spread of the disease had been exaggerated.
This is not a highly transmissible infection. It has been effectively contained in most of the developed countries in the world with a very limited number of cases.
“The concerns really lie in the large populous regions of the world, China, Indonesia, where the disease reporting systems are to some extent limited. It is much less clear what is going on there.”
He had greater concerns about highly populated Third World countries with only limited health control measures.
The Government, based on WHO advice, has strongly recommended against travel to Hong Kong, Toronto and Beijing and the Shanxi and Guangdong Provinces in China.
In Britain there have been six cases of Sars so far.
Fears of a seventh case were ruled out by doctors at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield today.
A man who developed flu-like symptoms on his return from a walking trip to a Sars-affected area in the Far East simply had a chest infection or flu, medics said.
Meanwhile, a group of school children from Cheshire returned home early from a cultural exchange visit to Beijing.
Two members of staff and 21 youngsters from Knutsford High School, Knutsford, Cheshire, had been due to return from their cultural exchange visit to Beijing tomorrow but came home a day early.
Despite widespread panic, the WHO yesterday said it felt there was still a “window of opportunity” to try to wipe out the Sars virus.
It did, however, accept that it was possible for Sars to become endemic, which would mean it would become a permanent threat.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has now killed at least 293 people worldwide, out of more than 4,600 infected.
Most cases have been in east Asia, but Toronto has also been affected, reporting 19 deaths.
Despite an announcement by Canada’s president Jean Chretien last night that WHO head, Gro Harlem Brundtland, had agreed to review the travel advice to Toronto, Elton John cancelled a concert in the city.
Meanwhile, Dr John Hubley a lecturer in health promotion at Leeds Metropolitan University, said he felt Sars had the potential to wreak “absolute destruction”.
“Though it’s too early to say for sure what the impact of Sars will be, it is certainly far more contagious than Aids and the course of infection is much quicker,” he said.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “The key thing for us is getting the best expert advice that we can when monitoring the disease and so far we feel we have done everything possible to keep close tabs on it.
“It seems to have worked in the six cases in Britain so far.”
