The Wilful Sunflower

A friend sent me a text message asking me to pray for his cousin, who has been warded under suspicion of contracting SARS. He was admitted to hospital with difficulty breathing, and threw up several times.

It brings the whole threat of SARS too close to home.

SARS: Four more families placed under home quarantine

This brings to five the number of families who have been placed under home quarantine.

Over the weekend, seven new suspected SARS cases were reported, bringing the total number of SARS cases notified to the ministry to 82. Twenty-four of them have been admitted to isolation wards in designated hospitals nationwide.

Malaysians who show Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) symptoms while on holiday or working abroad will not be allowed to return until they have been given a clean bill of health.

Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng said they should get themselves admitted to hospitals abroad.

The development of a diagnostic test, which is being pursued around the clock by the WHO collaborating network of 11 laboratories, has proved more problematic than hoped. Three diagnostic tests are now available and all have limitations as tools for bringing the SARS outbreak quickly under control.

The ELISA detects antibodies reliably but only from about day 20 after the onset of clinical symptoms. It therefore cannot be used to detect cases at an early stage before they have a chance to spread the infection to others. The second test, an immunofluorescence assay (IFA), detects antibodies reliably as of day 10 of infection, but is a demanding and comparatively slow test that requires the growth of virus in cell culture. The presently available PCR molecular test for detection of SARS virus genetic material is useful in the early stages of infection but produces many false-negatives, meaning that many persons who actually carry the virus may not be detected – creating a dangerous sense of false security for a virus that is known to spread easily in close person-to-person contact.

Jeff Ooi discusses the way the Malaysian press has handled the situation. His follow-up post is here. Background: You have to understand that The Star and The New Straits Times are the country's two main English dailies - The Star with wider circulation and readership than the NST. Each is owned a political party in the ruling coalition, hence they do tend to toe the government's line somewhat and are both considered "Establishment". But in this case the NST has been bold enough to go where no other Malaysian newspaper has gone before. Kudos to them.