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Moves to block SARS-type virus
Source: Agencies |
September 30, 2012, Sunday
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China's top quarantine authority yesterday ordered a three-month intensified quarantine to prevent the entry of a new type of virus from the same family as SARS.
In a statement, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine demanded increased body temperature monitoring and other medical inspections on travelers from Britain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, after the World Health Organization (WHO) said the new type of coronavirus, has left a Qatari citizen in critical condition in London. A man in Saudi Arabia has died of the virus.
The administration requires travelers from the three nations to inform China's entry-exit inspection and quarantine institutions if they develop acute respiratory symptoms such as fever, a cough or shortness of breath.
The new and potentially fatal virus in the same family as SARS - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - which was discovered in a patient in London last week appears not to spread easily from person to person, WHO said on Friday.
The United Nations health agency said it was working with partners to understand the public health risk better.
Global alert
"From the information available thus far, it appears that the novel coronavirus cannot be easily transmitted from person to person," it said in a statement.
The WHO put out a global alert last Sunday saying a new virus had infected a 49-year-old Qatari who had recently travelled to Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died.
The Qatari was described as critically ill on Tuesday and is being treated in a London hospital. No new confirmed cases of infection with the virus have since been reported, the WHO said.
The new virus shares some of the symptoms of SARS, another coronavirus, which emerged in China in 2002 and killed around a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
Both patients who have so far been confirmed with the new virus suffered kidney failure.
"Given the severity of the two laboratory confirmed cases, WHO is continuing to monitor the situation in order to provide the appropriate response, expertise and support to its member states," the WHO statement said.
Scientists at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which monitors disease in the European Union, said initial virology results and the separation in time of the only two confirmed cases suggest the infection may have developed from animals. Such diseases are known as zoonoses.
"(It) is quite probably of zoonotic origin and different in behavior from SARS," the scientists wrote in a "rapid communication" study in the online journal Eurosurveillance.
The UN agency has not recommended any travel restrictions in connection with the new virus.
In a statement, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine demanded increased body temperature monitoring and other medical inspections on travelers from Britain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, after the World Health Organization (WHO) said the new type of coronavirus, has left a Qatari citizen in critical condition in London. A man in Saudi Arabia has died of the virus.
The administration requires travelers from the three nations to inform China's entry-exit inspection and quarantine institutions if they develop acute respiratory symptoms such as fever, a cough or shortness of breath.
The new and potentially fatal virus in the same family as SARS - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - which was discovered in a patient in London last week appears not to spread easily from person to person, WHO said on Friday.
The United Nations health agency said it was working with partners to understand the public health risk better.
Global alert
"From the information available thus far, it appears that the novel coronavirus cannot be easily transmitted from person to person," it said in a statement.
The WHO put out a global alert last Sunday saying a new virus had infected a 49-year-old Qatari who had recently travelled to Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died.
The Qatari was described as critically ill on Tuesday and is being treated in a London hospital. No new confirmed cases of infection with the virus have since been reported, the WHO said.
The new virus shares some of the symptoms of SARS, another coronavirus, which emerged in China in 2002 and killed around a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
Both patients who have so far been confirmed with the new virus suffered kidney failure.
"Given the severity of the two laboratory confirmed cases, WHO is continuing to monitor the situation in order to provide the appropriate response, expertise and support to its member states," the WHO statement said.
Scientists at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which monitors disease in the European Union, said initial virology results and the separation in time of the only two confirmed cases suggest the infection may have developed from animals. Such diseases are known as zoonoses.
"(It) is quite probably of zoonotic origin and different in behavior from SARS," the scientists wrote in a "rapid communication" study in the online journal Eurosurveillance.
The UN agency has not recommended any travel restrictions in connection with the new virus.
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