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Tuesday, May 20, 2003The World Health Organization says only 16 of the more than 7,800 people infected worldwide with SARS got the disease while aboard an airplane and that all those cases came before airlines began screening passengers for symptoms..... ....WHO medical experts in Geneva said all of the 16 cases of people contracting SARS while aboard a plane took place on four flights and before airlines adopted tough screening measures. "There were 35 flights on which SARS-infected people who were symptomatic with disease traveled," said Dr. David Heymann, WHO's chief of communicable diseases. "We know, however, that on only four of those planes was there actually passage of the disease." Of those, 14 were passengers sitting within four seats of the SARS patient and two were flight attendants, Ryan said.... ....All 16 cases occurred before March 23, four days before the U.N. health agency recommended that airlines screen passengers for signs of SARS and advised that suspected cases not be allowed to travel. In other good news, the graph at the New England Journal of Medicine appears to show a decline in the rate of new SARS cases. (Scroll down past the article links. The slope of the line indicating new cases is less steep than it has been in previous weeks.) SARS could be seasonal, like other viruses, and this may just be the beginning of this year's end of the disease. If that's the case, we should be better prepared to deal with it next year when it recurs. Suspected patients can be isolated early and hospital staff can take appropriate respiratory precautions when dealing with suspected cases. posted by Sydney on 5/20/2003 08:26:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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