As a sign of the times, the first global epidemic of the 21st century was not made known by an organic name – plague or cholera – but by a threatening acronym: SARS. A name like an ophidian whistle that had spread via Internet channels emerging in the early 2000s.
Since another coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, hatched last December in the Chinese city of Wuhan, we have never stopped recalling this syndrome which ignited the year 2003, and tested the response capacities of the health authorities. world.
This global shock, extensively studied later, has had a lasting impact on the way the authorities manage the epidemics today.
See also – Why the worried coronavirus looks so much like SARS
What is SARS?
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, is a respiratory disease caused by a coronavirus that started to spread in 2002 in southern China. Of animal origin, this virus had its source in the bat bats which swarmed in the monumental caves of the province of Yunnan. It first infected humans in the same year in Guangdong Province. Human-to-human contaminations were then made by air, by contact with saliva or nasal secretions from infected people. Realizing the problem, China initially tried to cover up the epidemic.
However, SARS quickly reached Hong Kong and Singapore in February 2003. It was from these world trade centers that the coronavirus then spread outside Asia, then to around thirty countries. This new infection was quickly identified by the Italian doctor Carlo Urbani, then stationed in Hanoi. His warning to the World Health Organization (WHO) triggered an energetic response from the authorities on a global scale, allowing the disease to slow down and then be contained as early as the summer of 2003.
Infected like many medical personnel in Asia, Doctor Carlo Urbani died of SARS on March 29, 2003. The human toll will amount to 774 deaths for more than 8000 people infected during the epidemic, finally controlled in 2004. The experience has had a lasting impact on Asian countries, launching an intense reflection on the responses to bring to epidemics. “We are well prepared, because we have equipped ourselves for such a situation since we faced SARS in 2003“Said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong about the 2019-nCoV virus.
What are the differences between SARS and 2019-nCoV?
Both SARS and 2019-nCoV are coronaviruses for which there is no vaccine. Likewise, it seems that bats are the source of the virus in both cases, but this point is not yet established with regard to 2019-nCoV, which could also come from the snake.
The speed of spread differs between the two viruses. While it took nearly four months for SARS to reach a thousand people, Wuhan coronavirus infected more than 1,300 people in less than a month. However, it seems that SARS is more deadly, with a death rate of 9.6%, while that of the new coronavirus, although it is still too early to be sure, is between 3% and 5%. In addition, it seems that the Wuhan virus affects older people more than SARS: the median age of victims of this new coronavirus is 75 years, while half of the victims of SARS were under 65 years of age. WHO.
The different reaction of the Chinese authorities could however be an even more determining factor on the fate of the epidemic. Unlike SARS, China this time made no attempt to cover up this new health crisis, and put in place quarantine and travel limitation measures after only a few weeks. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday, January 22, that this reactivity should allow “minimize the chances of this epidemic taking on international proportions“.
Likewise, after China had taken four months to publish the SARS genome, genetic information from the 2019-nCoV virus was almost immediately shared with researchers around the world, allowing it to be identified quickly. “Rapid identification of virus shows real change in public health policy in ChinaJeremy Farrar, a British infectious disease specialist who worked on SARS, told Reuters.
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