Emergency Medical Services Utilization during an Outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the Incidence of SARS-associated Coronavirus Infection among Emergency Medical Technicians

Toronto Emergency Medical Services and SARS

Detection of airborne severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus and environmental contamination in SARS outbreak units.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is characterized by a risk of nosocomial transmission; however, the risk of airborne transmission of SARS is unknown. During the Toronto outbreaks of SARS, we investigated environmental contamination in SARS units, by employing novel air sampling and conventional surface swabbing. Two polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-positive air samples were obtained fro...

Coronavirus in severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

In November 2002, an outbreak of a life-threatening ‘atypical pneumonia’ for which no etiological agent could be identified occurred in Guangdong Province, China. In March 2003, a similar outbreak was reported in Hong Kong [1]. Cases of similar respiratory illness were subsequently reported globally including China, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and USA. This syndrome is a new clinical ent...

Antibody response and viraemia during the course of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-associated coronavirus infection.

To understand the time-course of viraemia and antibody responses to severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV), RT-PCR and ELISA were used to assay 376 blood samples from 135 SARS patients at various stages of the illness, including samples from patients who were in their early convalescent phase. The results showed that IgM antibodies decreased and became undetectable ...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

S evere acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) originated in the Guangdong province in southern China and spread by way of Hong Kong to the rest of the world in the spring of 2003. According to the most widely accepted theory at the time of this writing (July 2003), the likely culprit is a novel coronavirus that ‘‘jumped’’ from animals to humans. Thousands around the world have been infected and hun...