About SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)
SARS appears to be caused by a new strain of a coronavirus which may have "jumped" from animals to humans in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The virus has killed at least 420 people worldwide, and infected more than 8200 in 26 countries.
The genome sequence provides further evidence that SARS is caused by a new form of coronavirus, the same type of virus that causes some forms of the common cold.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a vaccine is still at least a year away, and the genome sequence also did not immediately give researchers a clue as to how and where the virus originated. The virus thought to cause SARS is constantly changing form which will make developing a vaccine more difficult.
Information of sequence data are available at CDC (Center of Disease Control and Prevention) and Genome Sciences Centre.
Viruses that emerge by jumping from animals to humans are often quickly contained because they can't be passed from human to human. But SARS has proven to be so difficult to control because humans can pass it to each other fairly easily -- when someone sneezes or coughs and another person inhales infected droplets, or when a person touches something that's been contaminated.
Center
of Disease Control and Prevention 中文
World Health Organization
Health
Canada
Center of Disease Control, Taiwan 台灣疾病管局
台灣SARS資訊