Word: tam
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...Toronto 13.5%. In Hong Kong, where baffled health officials held onto the 5% figure like a life preserver for weeks, the mortality rate has now passed 10%, with a cumulative total of 179 fatalities by the end of last week. "This is very worrying," says Professor John Tam, a microbiologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong...
...government has instead decided to focus on promoting public hygiene. In this, at least, Hong Kong's beleaguered leaders have succeeded. Public spitting has reduced, malls smell like hospitals and Hong Kongers carry alcohol swabs like spare change. "My hands are peeling from washing them so much," says Dr. Tam Lai-shan, who treats SARS patients at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Kong keeps a bucket of the Health Department-advocated 1:99 bleach-and-water solution handy. Before heading indoors, she wipes down her shoes, clothes and bags. Then she showers, washes her hair and changes clothes...
...Kong, doctors claim they are successfully combating the disease using the antiviral drug ribavirin to inhibit the virus combined with corticosteroids to check an overstimulated immune response. Ribavirin works by interfering with intracellular viral replication, slowing the infection's spread within the body. The problem, as microbiologist Professor John Tam of CUHK points out, is that "if you stop the replication, that means you stop the function of the cell...
...Researchers are even more worried that the coronavirus, which may be a mutated version of a virus common to animals, could mutate again, becoming more resistant to current treatments. "We are beginning to see patients not responding," says Tam, "and that's a very worrying development." A shape shift in the coronavirus' genetic code can make it more virulent and contagious. Highly mutable HIV continues to frustrate doctors, as it transforms before a vaccine can be developed...
...working theory, says Dr. Tam, is that the illness is spread by airborne respiratory mucous and saliva droplets. In Hong Kong, where 47 patients were under observation for pneumonia by the end of last week, the Department of Health urged at-risk hospital workers to wear protective gloves, masks and gowns...