Originally posted by Curval
Well, given that the paper is a day behind on the internet I figured I'd save time and just post the link to the story.
Article here
The scary thing is that there IS NO test (anywhere) for SARS as far as I have been made aware, and as far as the health department here is aware. If anyone knows of any test that may be availiable please let me know.
HK government health service had a working test sometime last week (according to the news) - took a day to process results as I recall. Try
www.info.gov.hk/dh/ap.htm or
www.info.gov.hk for details.
Found this from a speech the Chief Executive (and Koala look-alike) Tung King Wah, March 27:
"I must emphasise that although the disease is serious, we have a first-class public health system, highly professional medical staff and talented medical research teams. Since the cases occurred in Hong Kong on March 10, which was 17 days ago, we have made substantial progress in four areas. First, we have identified the source of the disease. Second, we have successfully discovered the new virus. Third, we have successfully developed a quick diagnostic test. Fourth, targetted treatment methods which are 80 to 90 per cent effective. In other words, among the 150 to 160 patients who have received effective treatment, the success rate is more than 80 per cent. You can see that we have achieved a lot in the past 17 days, in particular in medical development. Professor Yuen and Professor Tam will elaborate on this later."But really there's not much cause for alarm if your kid responded to antibiotics, as SARS is a virus, and therefore is pretty much unaffected by antibiotics. The HK health workers used all sorts of antibiotics to no avail, and seem to have settled on ribavirin (an anti-viral) and corticosteroids as a working treatment.
