re: were - query share numbers? the following article is in...

re: were - query share numbers? the following article is in relation to whether sars is airborne or not:

Fears grow bug may be airborne
Nine tourists come down with SARS after flight to Beijing
WHO scientists theorize two viruses may be combining


DIRK BEVERIDGE
ASSOCIATED PRESS

HONG KONG—Adding to fears a deadly flu-like illness is being spread by air travellers, Hong Kong officials said yesterday nine tourists apparently came down with the deadly disease after another passenger infected them on a flight to Beijing.

The World Health Organization insisted air travel is safe but said its scientists are investigating each case to make sure the disease is not spread through ventilation.

In recent weeks Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has spread beyond hospitals, where dozens of health-care workers became infected, to schools, with at least four closed for several days.

Hong Kong officials said the nine tourists became sick after a mainland Chinese man with SARS infected them on a March 15 Air China flight.

If SARS can be more easily spread through the air — rather than by close contact with infected people who cough or sneeze — it could force restrictions on travel to contain the disease.

"We would want to be sure that it was people sitting next to that person and not the ventilation system in the airplane which was spreading the disease," said Dr. David Heymann, head of communicable diseases at WHO. "We have no evidence of the latter right now."

For one thing, he said, health investigators have followed thousands of passengers who flew with SARS-infected travellers and did not become sick.

However, he said that if cases are found that did not involve close contact with someone sick or at high risk, "we will then be very concerned that this might have become airborne."

The airplane cases seem similar to the way the disease got its start here — from one hotel guest, who spread it to six strangers staying on the same floor. One expert theorized it might have spread through the air-conditioning system.

SARS has spread most rapidly through Asian hospitals, some of which initially lacked the surgical masks and goggles needed to keep health-care workers from catching the disease.

Hong Kong reported 26 new cases yesterday, bringing its total to 286 — more than half the world total of 487.

In the United States, 39 cases have been diagnosed, 32 of whom had travelled to Asia.

Singapore's government has ordered 740 people who may have been exposed to stay home for 10 days or risk stiff fines.

Officials of WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said Monday SARS may be caused by a new form of the coronavirus, one of a few viruses that can cause the common cold.

But WHO virologist Dr. Klaus Stohrsaid researchers continue to find signs of another germ family, the paramyxovirus.

"What we are seeing actually are three hypotheses," he said. SARS might be caused by one of those two viruses, or "these two pathogens have to come together to cause this very severe outbreak."