Asia rushes to launch fast SARS tests
Asia rushes to launch fast SARS tests
Reuters, Kuala Lumpur/Beijing
China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore are racing to launch swift new tests that promise to zero in on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and slow the virus that has killed about 160 people, most of them in Asia.
Artus Biotech says it plans to give some research centers free diagnostic kits for field tests that will drastically cut the time needed to diagnose SARS.
"It takes roughly about two hours to perform the test and get results," Dr Finn Zelder, managing director of Artus Malaysia, told Reuters in Kuala Lumpur.
The firm is based in Hamburg, and is a spin-off of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine.
Zelder said the test does not identify SARS, but fingers the new coronavirus suspected of causing it.
"It is most likely the coronavirus is the causative agent for SARS but the last scientific proof has still to be delivered."
The mystery virus has killed 154 people and infected 3,437 worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
China, where 65 people are said to have died since the outbreak began late last year, has so far relied on chest X-rays to diagnose the atypical pneumonia accompanying the virus.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has three tests for experimental use -- two that look for antibodies for the virus suspected of causing SARS, and one that looks for actual genetic material from the virus.
Classical tests for antibodies typically take 10 to 20 days after infection, Artus says.
The official Xinhua news agency said doctors at China's Military Medical Institute have also devised a test that takes two hours to identify virus antibodies and will begin using it in the next few days.
The next step would be to mass produce the kits.
There are hopes also in Singapore, where 12 people have died, that a diagnostic test will be ready to go through its paces within a week.
State-run Genome Institute of Singapore said the test would take three hours and may be sensitive enough to find the virus in its early stages before a person develops symptoms, such as high fever and a dry cough.
"We need to find the kit, get it tested, validated and then applied for general use. We will put out the kits on Friday," Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told a news conference.
Canada, Vietnam, and Thailand are among the other countries badly affected by SARS.
Malaysia has got off relatively lightly so far, with just one confirmed death from the virus, but authorities await post mortem results on two men who died in the last few days after being hospitalized with symptoms of the illness.
Meanwhile, the WHO said China, epicenter of SARS virus that has killed about 160 people worldwide, had failed to report all its cases and the capital, Beijing, could have five times the official number.
The virus, which is new to science and has no known cure, has been carried by air travelers to around the world in the past six weeks, infecting over 3,400 people.
Hong Kong, the second most affected area after mainland China, reported five more deaths from the virus on Wednesday.
"Indeed there have been cases of SARS -- there is no question about that -- that have also not been reported officially," German WHO virologist Wolfgang Preiser said after a visit to a military hospital in Beijing.
"The military seems to have its own reporting system which does not link in presently with the municipal one," he told a news conference on Wednesday.
WHO officials called for full disclosure from the country where SARS first appeared in November and which has been criticized widely for not sharing information with the rest of the world soon enough.