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La pneumonie atypique en provenance de Chine serait causée par deux virus et non un seul. Ce qui en ferait une infection totalement nouvelle. 

01/04/2003 - La pneumonie atypique en provenance de Chine serait causé par deux virus et non pas un seul. C'est l'hypothèse la plus sérieuse envisagée par les biologistes de l'OMS chargés de l'enquête. Le premier virus serait issu d'une famille parfaitement banale, celle des coronaviridae. Ces virus sont notamment responsables de deux tiers des rhumes. Le deuxième, déjà identifié il y a deux semaines, est un paramyxovirus. Cette famille est impliquée dans différentes maladies respiratoires.

Le coronavirus serait le premier à attaquer, de façon à mobiliser les défenses immunitaires de la victime. Dans un deuxième temps, le paramyxovirus prendrait le relais sur un organisme affaibli. Cette façon de procéder ferait du SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) une infection totalement nouvelle, selon la revue Nature.

L'identité des coupables reste à confirmer mais la nouvelle inquiète les autorités médicales du monde entier. Il n'existe à l'heure actuelle aucun traitement efficace contre les coronavirus, qui sont en général bénins. La recherche médicale sur ces microbes n'a jamais été une priorité. Il s'agirait cette fois d'un mutant exceptionnellement offensif. Le seul traitement fourni aux victimes est la ribavirine, un antiviral courant. Mais son efficacité n'est pas encore démontrée. Le 1er avril, le SARS avait d'ores et déjà contaminé 1804 personnes dans 17 pays et provoqué la mort de 62 d'entre elles, selon l'OMS.

News.com.au 06Apr03

SIX airline passengers have been detained for medical assessment at Australian airports over the last 24 hours under tough new quarantine measures announced in response to the SARS epidemic. In a statement, Chief Commonwealth Medical Officer Richard Smallwood said four of the passengers landed at Perth Airport.

All four were cleared of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) after being assessed by nurses based at the airport.

The other two were also cleared after a checkup by on-site medical staff at Sydney Airport.

One of them was referred by the airline and the second was stopped by customs officers, Professor Smallwood said.

The latest figures bring to 14 the number of people who have been identified for medical assessment at airports since the new quarantine clearance measures were announced on Friday.

All cases have been cleared.

However, four people remain under investigation for the deadly pneumonia-like illness in Victoria.

The four under investigation include three children from the same family from Canada and a two-year-old girl from Vietnam.

A temporary resident in NSW who has since recovered is believed to have been Australia's only confirmed case of the illness, which has killed 89 people and infected 2,500 worldwide since spreading from southern China.

Meanwhile, the health department's SARS hotline had received more than 10,000 calls since it was established eight days ago, Prof Smallwood said.

This report appears on news.com.au.

News.com.au By Jewel Topsfield 06Apr03

ISABELLE Hogarth, one of four suspected SARS victims in Melbourne, turned four today in an isolation ward at Monash Medical Centre.

"I want to go home," she yelled through the glass walls.

"I want to ride my bike," her six-year-old brother Thomas chimed in.

Isabelle, Thomas, 18-month-old Jack and their parents David and Deb have been in the isolation unit since Thursday night, after all three children developed symptoms of the deadly SARS virus, including high fevers and coughs.

The Australian-born family, who were on holidays from Toronto, Canada, arrived in Melbourne last Sunday.

"The walls are definitely closing in around us," Mr Hogarth said wearily.

"All I'd like to say is that the children are fine, a little bit tired, and the medical staff have been wonderful."

Professor Richard Doherty, the treating doctor at Monash Medical Centre, said he was very pleased with the children's condition.

He was hopeful they would be discharged tomorrow.

"I had the opportunity to talk to the head of respiratory diseases for public health in Canada and one of the senior treating doctors for the SARS cases at the children's hospital in Toronto and we're all pretty comfortable these children would not have been classified as SARS (cases) in Canada," Prof Doherty said.

But he said SARS could not be ruled out unless they had an alternative diagnosis.

"It remains possible in the absence of a firm diagnosis they had mild SARS and are now getting better," Prof Doherty said.

The dilemma facing Monash Medical Centre is that no-one knows whether a SARS victim could potentially spread the virus even though they appeared to have recovered.

"We have to strike a balance between keeping someone in hospital for public health reasons and getting them out of hospital for economic, social, personal and medical reasons," Prof Doherty said.

"I'm really hopeful we will be on solid grounds to be able to discharge tomorrow but I can't promise."

Meanwhile, a two-year-old girl who was rushed to Monash Medical Centre with suspected SARS late yesterday remains in an isolation unit.

The girl, whose name has not been released, arrived in Australia from north Hanoi in Vietnam yesterday.

Prof Doherty said she had responded extremely well to antibiotics and her fever seemed to have disappeared.

However, her case was still considered "fairly serious" because several SARS cases had been reported in Vietnam.

Prof Doherty said communication had been difficult because the mother did not speak fluent English and the child was bewildered.

"She seems well but as you can imagine she is a little girl whose mum doesn't speak good English and she is finding the circumstances fairly terrifying and she's fairly upset," he said.

Prof Doherty said testing was continuing and he was hopeful an alternative diagnosis would be made.

This report appears on news.com.au.

news.com.au By Mark McCord 06Apr03

THE high-profile death of an International Labour Organisation (ILO) official and the announcement of more cases of SARS in the Chinese capital put Beijing in the spotlight again as the race moved on to find a cure for the killer disease.

As the first suspected case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was detected in Kuwait, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts continued to search for the cause of the mystery illness in the epidemic's epicentre, southern China.

The death of the ILO's Pekka Aro from SARS was announced at a Chinese Health Ministry news conference in Beijing. He was the highest profile casualty of the outbreak since WHO expert Carlo Urbani -- who first identified the disease - died in Bangkok last month.

Finnish official Aro was among 19 new cases announced in the capital, bringing the number of deaths in Beijing to four.

At least 51 deaths from SARS have been reported in China and 1,247 people have been infected, according to official figures released today.

WHO experts continued their probe into the killer pneumonia as China went into damage control mode to repair an image badly tarnished by its foot-dragging in handling the outbreak.

WHO investigators held meetings with Chinese health and disease control officials today, their fourth day in Guangdong province, where the virus has killed more people than anywhere else.

In an effort to staunch criticism of China's handling of the outbreak, state-run media carried reports by the WHO praising China for its handling of the crisis the authorities put a gag on Internet jokers mentioning SARS online.

In Hong Kong, hopes that the rate of infection has slowed were dashed as the city woke up to news that another three people had died today and 39 more infections had been detected.

Despite assurances from health authorities and Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa that the rate of infection had stabilised, the sudden surge in detections and deaths Saturday raised the death toll to 20 and the number of infections to 800.

Citizens and organisations, already taking no chances by wearing surgical masks and shunning public places, stepped up precautionary measures today.

Among them, the Roman Catholic diocese removed basins of holy water from its churches and ordered clergy to wear masks and gloves.

Worshippers were told not to attend mass if they were ill and were urged not to hold hands during prayers. The measures will remain in place during Easter, which falls on April 20 this year.

Panic set in throughout much of the rest of Asia, as governments continued to urge citizens to stay away from infected areas, and in the rest of the world as the virus reached newer shores.

With the disease taken hold in Singapore, where six people have died and 103 cases have been confirmed, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong set up a cabinet-level task force to help beef up the city-state's defences.

It was also suggested that the government take the opportunity provided by the siege under which the virus has the city to test Singapore's much-vaunted bio-terrorism security shelters.

In Malaysia, acting Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi called for calm after the country's first probable death from SARS was announced overnight.

Australia, taking no chances after four children who recently arrived in the country were identified as suspected carriers, SARS has been categorised as quarantinable, allowing authorities to detain anybody entering the country with suspected symptoms.

On the other side of the Pacific, an eighth person died in Canada's Ontario province and a ninth was suspected. Canada remains the worst-hit country outside Asia with 187 infections. More than 3,500 people are in voluntary quarantine in Ontario.

Kuwait brought the tally of potentially affected countries to as many as 31 when it announced its first suspected case. An expatriate woman who returned to Kuwait from southeast Asia is being tested.

The SARS fallout continued to batter the world's tourism industry.

In Taipei, travel agents appealed for government assistance to ease the worst crisis in 30 years, and Australian analysts said the virus scare would dash hopes of an Asian-sourced resuscitation of the nation's flagging tourism industry.

This report appears on news.com.au.

The Port Frances Times on Line April 01, 2003 TORONTO (CP)

    Armed with his physics degree from McGill University, screenwriter John Rogers admits he’s responsible for all the scientific ‘‘gobbledegook’’ designed to hold up the plot in the new science fiction adventure film The Core.    But Rogers insists that the far-fetched premise — about a group of scientists and astronauts who bore deep into the middle of the planet to prevent a fatal-to-mankind cataclysm — is grounded in scientific fact. Ninety per cent of it anyway.    ‘‘It’s a Journey to the Centre of the frickin’ Earth movie,’’ he says. ‘‘We’re going to have to bend science a little but the idea was not to treat the audience like chimps. Audiences are going to know what smells real. When you’re lying to them, at least lie to them convincingly and try to bend science and not break it.’’    Working with co-writer Cooper Layne, Rogers also made sure that this time, those venerable sci-fi regulars, the white-lab-coated scientists, were reasonably authentic.    ‘‘It’s kinda cool. I’m getting a lot of e-mails and comments from scientists about how great it is to see scientists being the petty, bickering people that they are.’’    Apparently there was even more scientific ‘‘explainy stuff’’ before the film was screened for test audiences, but they rejected it and out it went.    Aaron Eckhart and Stanley Tucci play geophysicists who learn that the Earth’s molten core has stopped spinning (who knew it turned?), a crisis that will damage the above-ground electromagnetic field, leading to all sorts of calamity, including massive electrical storms that will spell the end of the human race in a year’s time.    A six-person crew must ride an innovative inner-space ship down to the core, then plant a series of nuclear charges just so, to get it going round and round once more.    Rogers insists the premise is solid.    ‘‘The core actually spins, faster than the earth itself as a matter of fact, and every 500,000 years it slows down, pauses and reverses.’’    And just in case skeptics remain in the house, Paramount Pictures released a newly published theory from a bona-fide and highly respected American geophysicist who says the Earth’s nuclear furnace could die anywhere from 100 years to a billion years from now, causing the collapse of the planet’s magnetic field.    Rogers insists it’s real but concedes it sounds bogus. After all, Dr. J. Marvin Herndon, head of Transdyne Corp. in San Diego?    ‘‘I know, Transdyne sounds like such a 1980s sci-fi thing. But no, Herndon’s been kicking around in this field for 20 years. The paper was peer-reviewed by the Academy of American Scientists. I mean they don’t allow guys with tin foil on their heads to publish papers in these journals!’’    Rogers, 36, says he became interested in science when, as a kid, he went to the movies and saw such 1960s sci-fi thrillers as Fantastic Voyage, At the Earth’s Core and Journey to the Center of the Earth. A Bostonian, he went to McGill in 1984, fell in love with Canada and his future Canadian wife, and proudly took out citizenship.    Although he now lives in Los Angeles, he still has a home in Stittsville, Ont.    He began his showbiz career in Canada as a stand-up comic — even copped a few Gemini Award nominations and a very brief TV sitcom — but soon found his strength as a writer for such TV shows as Cosby and the animated Jackie Chan Adventures.    Screenplay credits include The Count of Monte Cristo, Rush Hour 2 and American Outlaws. His next project is to try to bring the legendary Isaac Asimov sci-fi trilogy, Foundation, to the screen.    But it’s those clunky 1960s sci-fi thrillers he remembers and says there are hidden tributes to them throughout The Core.    He says he drew the line, though, at what some of those movies, like The Mole People, proposed and he wasn’t going to go along with any suggestions his adventurers run into retro-looking prehistoric monsters or subterranean tribes down there.    ‘‘There was one terrifying moment during a meeting, when one of the producers went ‘Well, c’mon, no one’s ever been down there. Nobody knows what’s down there. ANYTHING could be down there.’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, no! It’s about to all go bad on me!’ ’’