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American Morning

SARS Outbreak: A Tale of Two Cities

Aired April 30, 2003 - 08:43   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now for the latest on SARS and a tale of two cities. Come to Toronto. That is the urging by the city's mayor and the World Health Organization is lifting its SARS-related travel advisory. It's a different message, though, from the mayor of Beijing, who says the SARS advisory remains severe in his city.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here now to talk about some of the latest developments with SARS.

Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning.

Some numbers first of all. The numbers, we have to watch those every single day. Let's look around the world and then at the United States. Around the world now, 5,462 cases, 353 deaths. In the United States, 222 suspected cases, 52 probable causes, zero deaths.

Really quick, it's been a little confusing about the suspected and probable cases. If you think about it, they're going to add another now category as well. Dr. Julie Gerberding was on the Hill yesterday, testifying, talking about the fact that these laboratory tests we've been hearing so much about is going to start being used as well. It's going to add another degree of precision as well to the actual testing that is already under way. Of course, with these tests, as you know, Daryn, there can be a lot of false negatives as well, so they're going to approach that pretty cautiously.

The big news out of the Capitol Hill, out of the Senate yesterday, was the fact that Canadian health officials were testifying as well, and reminding the senators that all of the cases in Toronto, all of them, every single one, started with one individual who returned to Hong Kong. He died, but not before passing it on to his sons, SARS that is. His son actually went to the hospital at that point, and was told he did not need to be isolated. This was in the very early in the stages of the epidemic. He passed it on to several health care workers and other friends and relatives.

Now actually, the number of SARS cases in Toronto has decreased over the past week. There have been no cases of community transmission over the last three weeks, and there's been no new cases exported out of Toronto now over the last week. All of this now leading to lifting of the travel advisory in Toronto.

Big deal, a side note as well. One of the city commissioners said it was about $2 billion that it ended up costing just having that travel advisory on for a week. The Commission for Public Security for Toronto, the commissioner, this is what he had to say about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JAMES YOUNG, ONTARIO COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC SECURITY: There never has been any risk of a community, and people are safe walking down the street in Toronto as they are in London, or Paris, or Washington or New York. The travel advisory is essentially at the beginning of our travel season forced cancellation of conferences and tourism to Toronto, which is a real tourist destination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Obviously a very different picture being painted in Beijing, as you already mentioned. If you're talking about the number of cases going down in Toronto, in Beijing, very different, 101 new cases in Beijing over the past several days, nine new deaths now just in this one city. Seventeen of the hospitals now solely designated for the treatment of SARS. So you can really see the difference in those two cities. A lot of good news in Toronto, not so good in Beijing.

Also, Daryn, really quick, children, we've been talking a little bit about that, children seem to have some degree of protection from SARS. We don't know exactly why. But if you're under 8, there has been nobody that has developed severe cases of SARS, and no deaths among those children as well.

KAGAN: Still so much to learn, still so much work to do as well. Is the medically community going toward treatment or toward looking at a vaccine for this?

GUPTA: Well, I think treatment is going to be the first step. Certainly they're looking at a bunch of anti-virals, there's lots of them out there. The vaccine, that's still going to be a while away. It's a much more difficult process to develop a vaccine. That could be up to a year, maybe even longer away. The real struggle after that is getting people to use it. We've heard so much about the flu shots, 36,000 people die of flu every year. There is good protection out there. Bill Hemmer knows about this, but you got to get people to use it as well in order for it to be effective.

KAGAN: I was going to say, don't bring up flu shots just as we're talking to Bill, because that's going to take up the entire hour.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you.

GUPTA: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired April 30, 2003 - 08:43   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now for the latest on SARS and a tale of two cities. Come to Toronto. That is the urging by the city's mayor and the World Health Organization is lifting its SARS-related travel advisory. It's a different message, though, from the mayor of Beijing, who says the SARS advisory remains severe in his city.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here now to talk about some of the latest developments with SARS.

Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning.

Some numbers first of all. The numbers, we have to watch those every single day. Let's look around the world and then at the United States. Around the world now, 5,462 cases, 353 deaths. In the United States, 222 suspected cases, 52 probable causes, zero deaths.

Really quick, it's been a little confusing about the suspected and probable cases. If you think about it, they're going to add another now category as well. Dr. Julie Gerberding was on the Hill yesterday, testifying, talking about the fact that these laboratory tests we've been hearing so much about is going to start being used as well. It's going to add another degree of precision as well to the actual testing that is already under way. Of course, with these tests, as you know, Daryn, there can be a lot of false negatives as well, so they're going to approach that pretty cautiously.

The big news out of the Capitol Hill, out of the Senate yesterday, was the fact that Canadian health officials were testifying as well, and reminding the senators that all of the cases in Toronto, all of them, every single one, started with one individual who returned to Hong Kong. He died, but not before passing it on to his sons, SARS that is. His son actually went to the hospital at that point, and was told he did not need to be isolated. This was in the very early in the stages of the epidemic. He passed it on to several health care workers and other friends and relatives.

Now actually, the number of SARS cases in Toronto has decreased over the past week. There have been no cases of community transmission over the last three weeks, and there's been no new cases exported out of Toronto now over the last week. All of this now leading to lifting of the travel advisory in Toronto.

Big deal, a side note as well. One of the city commissioners said it was about $2 billion that it ended up costing just having that travel advisory on for a week. The Commission for Public Security for Toronto, the commissioner, this is what he had to say about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JAMES YOUNG, ONTARIO COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC SECURITY: There never has been any risk of a community, and people are safe walking down the street in Toronto as they are in London, or Paris, or Washington or New York. The travel advisory is essentially at the beginning of our travel season forced cancellation of conferences and tourism to Toronto, which is a real tourist destination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Obviously a very different picture being painted in Beijing, as you already mentioned. If you're talking about the number of cases going down in Toronto, in Beijing, very different, 101 new cases in Beijing over the past several days, nine new deaths now just in this one city. Seventeen of the hospitals now solely designated for the treatment of SARS. So you can really see the difference in those two cities. A lot of good news in Toronto, not so good in Beijing.

Also, Daryn, really quick, children, we've been talking a little bit about that, children seem to have some degree of protection from SARS. We don't know exactly why. But if you're under 8, there has been nobody that has developed severe cases of SARS, and no deaths among those children as well.

KAGAN: Still so much to learn, still so much work to do as well. Is the medically community going toward treatment or toward looking at a vaccine for this?

GUPTA: Well, I think treatment is going to be the first step. Certainly they're looking at a bunch of anti-virals, there's lots of them out there. The vaccine, that's still going to be a while away. It's a much more difficult process to develop a vaccine. That could be up to a year, maybe even longer away. The real struggle after that is getting people to use it. We've heard so much about the flu shots, 36,000 people die of flu every year. There is good protection out there. Bill Hemmer knows about this, but you got to get people to use it as well in order for it to be effective.

KAGAN: I was going to say, don't bring up flu shots just as we're talking to Bill, because that's going to take up the entire hour.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you.

GUPTA: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com