Researchers searching for SARS have discovered another new virus in American children. At the Yale School of Medicine, they found that 19 out of 296 local children they studied had respiratory infections of an unknown cause?but they didn’t have SARS. The new virus is called hMPV, and its discovery solves a long mystery about where certain childhood illnesses come from.
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The reason SARS passes so easily from one person to another has been discovered: the SARS virus can live for as long as 3 days on walls, glass, plastic, stainless steel and other common household and hospital surfaces. WHO spokesman Iain Simpson says, “It is very difficult to give it a specific length of time because it varies from surface to surface and even place to place.” Most viruses do not last nearly that long on exposed surfaces.
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Scientists have finally traced the animal host from which the SARS virus mutated and jumped to human beings: the civet cat. At first it was thought that SARS originated with birds, as most flu viruses have recently. Virus samples from civet cats are very similar to the virus that causes SARS in humans. “It is highly likely that the virus jumped across,” says microbiologist Kwok-Yung Yuen.
“If these findings are true, then this is a significant breakthrough,” says Peter Cordingley of the World Health Organization (WHO). “First of all, it confirms the theory that the virus has crossed the species barrier. Secondly, it will help scientists work on an effective diagnostic test.”
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While viruses can mutate and spread from animals to man, there’s no evidence this has ever happened between dogs and humans, and we can’t catch diseases directly from dogs (or vice-versa). The only thing they can give us is fleas and parasites; however, the Chinese fear dogs are one of the reasons SARS is spreading, so people are beginning to kill their pets.
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