New virus for a high-tech age

In this age of internet and high-tech communication, it is but natural for the public to be concerned about the danger from Sars viral infection. However, the reaction should be centred more on caution and less on panic. It is important to know some basic facts on the Sars virus and the Sars infection, in order to devise strategies for countering the fall out on public health.

The Sars virus is a mutant version of an old virus — corona virus — and can cause high fever and pneumonia in affected patients. Little is known how and why this new virus burst out on the scene now in China and Hong Kong and why a mutant version of a rather banal virus became suddenly dangerous for the humans. The disease is characterised by breathing difficulties as breathlessness, cough, etc, besides high fever, but is different from common cold in having a specific pneumonia picture on X-ray examination. The identification of Sars virus in the patient’s blood, saliva or throat or nasal secretions by special virological tests is necessary before confirming whether the patient is Sars patient or not. The virus is highly infective and spreads through air and hence the use of face masks helps to minimise the risk of infection. After getting into contact with the Sars virus, the symptoms of fever, and so on, appear in the patient within 10 days and it is important that Sars patients are not allowed to have close contacts with persons who are not adequately protected with gloves, face masks.

All persons or passengers coming from Sars infected places like Beijing, Guangzhou province in China, Hong Kong, South East Asia must be screened on arrival in the country for absence of the Sars symptoms and must be told of the dangers of passing on the deadly virus to other people around them.

Thankfully, only one in 10 infected persons is being killed by this virus world wide, but if proper care is not taken in time, this figure could rise to more alarming proportion. Being a new disease and a new virus, the medical community and health workers in the country as well as the public must be educated at the earliest about the various aspects of the disease and adequately trained on how to handle the patients, with the minimum of inconvenience and the maximum of security for the public at large.