Scientists identify cause of SARS virus

Scientists have identified the cause of the SARS disease as a new pathogen – a member of a viral family never before seen in humans, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed.

Over the past three weeks – since it was first identified – the SARS outbreak has spread at an alarming rate with 3,300 cases reported now in 25 countries worldwide. The UK has reported six suspected cases of SARS –three of whom are now said to be recovering from the illness.

UK scientists were among the huge international effort to identify the disease – as 13 laboratories in 10 countries collaborated on the findings.

Two laboratories in China recently joined this network of laboratories from Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, the UK and America.

Dr Klaus Stöhr, WHO virologist and the coordinator of the collaborative research network, said: “The people in this network have put aside profit and prestige to work together to find the cause of this new disease and to find way new ways of fighting it. In this globalised world, such collaboration is the only way forward in tackling emerging diseases.”

The successful identification of the coronavirus means that various laboratories can now turn to unravelling the genetic information of the SARS virus and compare the sequences obtained from viruses in different parts of the world. Experts are gathering at WHO this week to map future work on SARS.

WHO and the network of laboratories dedicate their detection and characterisation of the SARS virus to Dr Carlo Urbani, the WHO scientist who first alerted the world to the existence of SARS in Hanoi, Vietnam, and who died from the disease in Bangkok on 29 March 2003.

(GMcG)