15 April 2003
CDC says SARS Breakthrough Could Lead to Medicines, Vaccine
(U.S. disease center head announces publication of SARS virus genetic
code) (5940)
The cracking of the genetic code of the virus that causes severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS), now achieved by both Canadian and U.S.
research teams, is "critically important" in the development of
diagnostic tests, antiviral medicines and a vaccine, according to U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Julie
Gerberding.
Gerberding briefed reporters on the agency's progress in understanding
the disease April 14, one month after CDC initiated its outbreak
investigation.
CDC's analysis of the gene sequence for the virus that causes SARS
virtually duplicates findings from a Canadian laboratory announced
days earlier, a "tremendously exciting" discovery, Gerberding said.
"We are basically 31 days into this investigation, and ... we have
international collaborators, who not only identified the likely cause
of SARS, but also have sequenced the virus and have created a number
of laboratory tests that look increasingly promising," Gerberding
said. "It's a scientific achievement that I don't think has ever been
paralleled in our history."
Gerberding said that health care providers must remain vigilant in
their efforts to contain the disease outbreak by isolating patients
and using infection control precautions among those in contact with a
patient.
Completing the genetic analysis of the SARS virus so early in this
outbreak investigation may be a significant achievement, but
Gerberding said the development of targeted drugs and a vaccine are
still well into the future. Both of those processes require
significant time and thorough testing.
Regarding the possible development of a vaccine, Gerberding said, "I
think it would be naïve to say that we would have it in under a year."
The World Health Organization is keeping the official international
tally on the occurrence of SARS cases, reported to be 3235 on April 15
with 154 deaths. The CDC reports 193 suspected U.S. cases, but
Gerberding said that number could soon drop when suspected cases are
confirmed to be a malady other than SARS.
The following term is used in the text:
PCR: Polymerase chain reaction. This is a test to detect levels of the
virus circulating in the blood or cells.
Following is the transcript of the CDC briefing.
(begin transcript)
CDC Telebriefing Transcript
Update on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
April 14, 2003
DR. GERBERDING: On March 14, CDC activated the Emergency Operation
Center to initiate the coordination of the SARS outbreak
investigation. It's now April 14, and so we are entering into our
second month of this operation, with a mixed picture, I would say.
Today we are aware of almost 3,000 cases of SARS that have been
diagnosed in the world, including 193 suspected cases that are under
investigation in the United States. The pattern of the global epidemic
is mixed. We hear reports from Hong Kong, probably China, and
certainly Singapore that there is ongoing transmission that the
containment procedures have not adequately contained spread to the
immediate group.
And yet in other parts of the world, including Taiwan and the United
States and Canada, it does look like the outbreak has been contained,
and that so far we are seeing very limited transmission outside of
travelers to the affected areas.
One of the really important messages that we're emphasizing to the
public health community today is that despite the fact that we do seem
to be able to contain the spread of this disease in the United States
and are not right now experiencing a situation that looks like the
patterns in Hong Kong, we have to remain vigilant, because it is only
one highly-transmissible patient that can infect a very large number
of people.
And so even though we would like to be able to take a deep breath and
relax a little bit here, this is absolutely the wrong time to do that.
We must continue to identify suspect cases, to isolate individuals as
quickly as we can and to do everything possible to prevent the spread
of this illness into our community, so that we don't end up with an
epidemic that is as rapidly progressive as we are seeing in some parts
of Asia.
We have some very exciting news today from CDC related to the
coronavirus itself. The sequence of the coronavirus was published over
the weekend by the investigators in Canada, British Columbia. And they
deserve an enormous congratulations for their efforts in getting it
out as quickly as they did.
And today CDC has followed suit and has published a sequence of the
virus we've been working with on our Internet site. We can now say
with a great deal of confidence that the virus sequence at CDC is very
similar to the virus sequence in Canada, with a difference of about
ten based pairs, which is a trivial difference in a virus that's about
29,000 based pairs. And the virus here at CDC has an additional
element at one end of the virus that we were able to add to the
published sequence.
But this clearly is consistent with a brand new virus in the family of
coronaviruses. And unfortunately the clues from comparing it to the
animal viruses have not given us any real leads in terms of where did
it come from. We can't say it's a mouse virus or a pig virus, or any
other animal virus, necessarily, because it just isn't similar enough
to the known species to be able to draw those conclusions.
But having this information is critically important for developing
even faster diagnostic tests, and certainly should help us in the
development of antivirals and vaccine work down the road.
So this is tremendously exciting.
As I said, we are basically 31 days into this investigation, and the
fact that we have international collaborators, who not only identified
the likely cause of SARS, but also have sequenced the virus and have
created a number of laboratory tests that look increasingly promising.
It's a scientific achievement that I don't think has ever been
paralleled in our history. So we are all collectively proud of the
efforts of the collaborating investigators, and certainly at CDC with
Dr. Larry Anderson, who is here with me today and his laboratory
group, who worked on the virus and the sequencing here, as well as Tom
Ksiazek, and many, many other scientists at CDC, who have been
absolutely instrumental in contributing to the global effort.
So let me stop now and take some questions. I can get the callers on
the phone wound up and I'll take a question from the floor, here.
QUESTION: [Inaudible]
The U.S. Army has a [inaudible] antiviral compounds that are available
plus the pharmaceutical companies through some efforts on Secretary
Thompson's part, donated, or giving us things that they have on the
shelf or in the pipeline, so the Army is rapidly putting those
compounds through a testing protocol. So far we've had discouraging
results for Ribavirin, which doesn't look like, at least in the test
model, as having much activity against the virus. Although we don't
know for sure it won't have activity in patients. But they are looking
at all sorts of other things. And if we get a lead, we'll let you
know. But so far we haven't got information that's really pointing in
the direction just yet.
Let me take a phone question, please.
MODERATOR: We have a question from the line of Miriam Falco from CNN.
Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi, Dr. Gerberding. I have two questions. Number one, do you
know of any of the sequencing came from the specimen from any
super-spreaders? And also what advances have been made in animal
models and what difference does it make, now that you have the genome
for the animal models that you were trying to develop?
DR. GERBERDING: Thank you.
I cannot tell you specifically which patients the virus came from, and
whether or not that individual would be classified as a
super-spreader. But we can check on that for you. The U.S. is dealing
with a virus that was isolated from the patient tissues that we had
here, and those patients came from Asia. And I believe that the
Canadians were sequencing the virus that came from one of the Canadian
patients. But we can go back and check on that in detail, and Tom
Skinner from out Public Affairs Office can give you that information.
With respect to the animal models, a great deal of progress has been
made. And we are waiting for the final reports from our collaborators
in the Netherlands, who are working very hard on the primate model.
But the virus has been put in a number of animal tissues, and we're
hopeful that one of these will not only create a disease that would
allow it to fulfill the conditions for saying that coronavirus is
definitely the cause, but also be a model in which we could test
antiviral drug treatments or other therapies.
So we're working fast, but we're not quite there with an announcement
yet.
Yes?
QUESTION: The last time we had a news conference, you said it could
possibly a year or so before we could see a vaccine for this. With
discovering the sequencing now, do you see that timetable speeding up?
DR. GERBERDING: I would like to say that it would speed up, but
unfortunately, there just is a finite amount of time to get a vaccine
together. When you do have vaccine, the first step is to get an animal
model where you can show that any virus component will create an
immune response that can protect the animal. Once you have a candidate
and an animal model, you still have to create the product in a safe
format for people, and then at least go through the clinical studies
to show that it's safe.
In order to get it licensed, you at least have to show efficacy in two
separate animal models. That's just going to take some time, and I
think it would be naive to say that we would have it in under a year.
Question from the phone.
OPERATOR: We have a question from the line of Rob Stein at the
Washington Post. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi, Dr. Gerberding, thanks for doing this. Two questions.
The first one was: of the new cases that you've reported, I guess,
from over the weekend--it looks like there's about 27--are any of them
secondary transmissions involving family members or health care
workers or anyone else, and if they are, what can you tell us about
them?
And then the second question was: can you tell me what's being in
hospitals to prevent--in this country to prevent outbreaks from
occurring here?
DR. GERBERDING: Yes. Let me answer your first question, and that deals
with are any of the cases that are new on the list cases of
transmission to family members or health care personnel?
All together, of the 193 patients that we are investigating in the
U.S. right now, 15 of them involve transmission to family contacts or
other members in the family. Some of these did come in over the
weekend. As I have said several times, we are casting a very wide net
with SARS in the U.S., and so any person who has traveled and has any
kind of fever or respiratory symptom has been on our suspected case
list. So likewise, if family members have even a subtle clinical
presentation, they get added to the list so that they can be isolated
and evaluated. So right now we're at 15 members in that group, and all
together five health care workers have been included in the suspected
case list.
In terms of what we're doing to protect health care workers throughout
the entire delivery system, the principle is that patients suspected
of SARS are put in isolation. They're put in rooms that have the
appropriate air exchange, so that if there is any tendency for
airborne transmission, that we are minimizing it. In addition, the
health care personnel and visitors wear masks, not just surgical masks
under these conditions, but the N95 respirator mask, which is the
appropriate mask for hospital environments where you're worried about
airborne transmission.
In addition, of course, they are taking measures to avoid droplet,
splatter and hand-to-hand or hand-to-surface contamination. So we call
that standard precautions, but what it really means is use barriers
and hand hygiene so that you don't contaminate yourself and then move
the virus either to yourself or to another patient in the vicinity.
These are standard infection control precautions that have been used
for a variety of infectious disease such as tuberculosis or many other
infections, and I think the health care environment has a long
tradition of familiarity with them. That may be one of the reasons why
we have had a little more success with containment here, is because we
have been using these standards for many, many other infectious
diseases for a long period of time, and we're trained to know how to
use them.
Let me take another question from the phone, please.
OPERATOR: Have a question from the line of Richard Knox with NPR.
Please go ahead.
DR. GERBERDING: I'm sorry. We have a bad connection. We can't
understand you.
QUESTION: Can you hear me?
DR. GERBERDING: Yes, we can.
QUESTION: Hi. This is Richard Knox from National Public Radio. Thanks
very much.
Over the weekend we heard about a case of . . . transmission from one
businessman to another at Heathrow Airport. The transmitted was
apparently this fellow who took 7 Lufthansa flights around Europe. And
I wondered whether anything more can be said about the investigation
of the Florida case involving a woman who returned from China and a
suspected co-worker?
DR. GERBERDING: We don't have any additional information on either of
the situations that you've mentioned, but I just want to emphasize
again that these are suspected situations in the U.S., and we are not
able to say definitively that any of the people implicated in these
chains(?) actually have SARS.
One of the steps that we will be taking this week in conjunction with
WHO is to begin to distinguish which patients in the U.S. are probably
SARS cases as opposed to simply suspected SARS cases. This is so that
our information will be consistent with the way that WHO is reporting
that data. And when we make that transmission, what you're going to
see is a reduction in the number of cases that we are reporting as
SARS in the WHO list, because they have a more stringent definition
than we do, and many of the people that we're counting are not going
to meet the WHO case definition. We're still going to follow them.
We're still going to treat them the same that we have since the
beginning here, because we want to err on the side of caution and
isolate anybody who might possibly be in this category. But I'm just
warning you to anticipate some potentially confusing changes in the
way our numbers look, and we'll be reminding you about why we're doing
this and what it all means in Thursday's MMWR.
QUESTION: Could I just ask a follow up?
DR. GERBERDING: Question up here.
QUESTION: Thanks for doing this. Some health care--some health
authorities in Hong Kong are expressing concern that because they are
seeing a wider clinical presentation, a wider range of symptoms among
some patients there, their concern is they fear that the virus may
have mutated. I'm wondering whether you could tell us, have you heard
in the various cases that the CDC is tracking whether--have you heard
of a wide clinical spectrum, and/or is there anything that you see in
the sequence that would suggest whether this is a rapidly changing
virus or something that looks pretty stable?
DR. GERBERDING: Well, let me first talk about the variability and what
we're seeing from a clinical perspective in SARS. I'm an infectious
disease doctor, and there isn't an infectious disease I know of where
there isn't a highly variable clinical picture all the way from
asymptomatic or mild disease to sometimes very severe disease.
So the patterns are not at all concerning for anything other than the
biology of a virus and the variable biology of the people who have it.
So that in and of itself is not concerning.
We know from almost the beginning of at least epidemiology that we've
been able to track in Hong Kong, that there were some people who
seemed to be highly efficient at transmitting, and others who didn't
seem to pass it along to anybody. That's the pattern that we saw
several weeks ago, and it's a pattern that we're still seeing today.
So that again, in and of itself, does not imply anything evolving in
the virus. It just tells us that it has a highly variable nature, and
we wish we knew why that pattern existed.
On the other hand, this is an RNA virus. It's a single-stranded RNA
virus, and that means there's just a single piece of the genetic
material, and when you have that kind of virus composition as it
reproduces itself, it doesn't have the zipper on the other side to
match up perfectly, so it makes mistakes, and there's just a natural
tendency for RNA viruses to evolve. The HIV virus is an RNA virus that
does that too, as it each time it replicates, it might make a few
mistakes, and so it is not surprising that we see strains emerge over
time. We haven't documented that yet with this virus, and I think the
fact that the sequenced data from the isolate characterized in Canada
and the U.S. are so close, suggests that large mutations are not
occurring. Perhaps there is some strain evolution that might account
for the very minor differences in the isolates that we've looked at so
far.
So in the short run, no strong epidemiologic or scientific evidence of
mutation, but it's biologically plausible, and we'll be keeping our
eye on these strains as we go forward.
There's a question here.
QUESTION: Thank you, doctor. Can you tell us where some of these news
cases are popping up, if they're concentrated in any one area, or if
they're just spread out across the country?
DR. GERBERDING: If you're speaking of the U.S. cases, it's just the
same pattern that we've been seeing all along because the lead risk
factor here is travel to Asia, and people travel to Asia all over the
country. It's a very sporadic pattern of spread, and the most cases
are in California and New York because the most travelers to Asia are
typically from California and New York. Let me take a phone question,
please.
OPERATOR: Laurie Garrett with Newsday. Your line is open.
QUESTION: Thank you. A quick question regarding the individual who
turned up in South Africa, and the questions about the possibility
that individuals who have a underlying immune compromise situation
might either be more likely to get infected and have a [inaudible]
illness or more likely to be a super spreader. So two parts to this
question.
One: do we know anything about any of the super spreaders that could
tell us whether or not any of them have any underlying autoimmunity or
immune system suppression or have undergone cancer therapy,
chemotherapy, anything like that.
And number two: what generally would you say are your concerns about
the possibility of HIV finding its place in sub-Saharan Africa?
DR. GERBERDING: Let me speak to this issue of super spreaders. This is
a term that we have used because it creates a plausible explanation
for the pattern of epidemiology that we're seeing, but it still is
really speculation. We don't know whether the virus is associated with
a lot of spread in an individual cluster because of something having
to do with the infected person or if it has to do with the type of
containment or failure of the containment procedures that are present
there.
So we need to understand the whole picture, why are some clusters
expanding so rapidly and other clusters are extinguished or die out?
We do know that the clusters that are associated with the largest
degree of transmission occur in people with the full-blown pneumonia,
and usually very sick people. It's possible that they have higher
titers or are crossing more or have more efficient air transmission of
the virus, but all of these things are speculation right now. We're
very eager to know and some of the clinical studies that are in
progress in Hong Kong or elsewhere will help us get to the bottom of
it, but it's no firm clues yet.
In terms of the pattern of spread in the African continent or
elsewhere, given what we've learned from HIV and the incredible speed
with which viruses can evolve in a given geographic area, of course
we're very concerned as the virus enters any new population. Right now
we don't have any information to say that if you are immunosuppressed
or have HIV infection, that you are a better spreader or you get
sicker, but I would at least be concerned about the possibility of
more severe illness in people who are immunosuppressed. That just
makes biological sense.
As we get more experience, again, with the full spectrum of
illness--and by the way our tests will help us with this because when
we have an accurate diagnostic test, then we'll be able to say, "This
person really has it and it's mild. This person has it and it's
severe." It will give us a gold standard so that we can compare apples
to apples and oranges to oranges.
There's a lot to learn about the clinical patterns here, and we
continue to work very aggressively as part of the WHO's collaborating
team in various parts of the world to get this information together
and get it back out to the clinicians.
Can I take one more question from the telephone, please?
MODERATOR: Geraldine Reyerson Cruz from Bloomberg News, your line is
open.
QUESTION: Hello. Thank you.
Two things. One is I noticed that you were calling the strain for your
research the Urbani strain. And I'm wondering about the naming of
this. Is this distinct? Is this something that you're going to
continue to use?
And also, secondly, in the bigger picture, what will success look like
in terms of containment?
DR. GERBERDING: When CDC published its first New England Journal
paper, describing the virology of this illness, we did propose the
name of the Urbani virus to honor the fact that Dr. Urbani, who is our
colleague and friend, who died of this illness and had done so much to
really help define the early stages of the epidemic, that was the
proposal.
But in fact, the names of all infectious disease agents are not picked
by CDC or WHO. There's actually an international committee that has
responsibility for choosing the names of all the organisms. So they'll
get input from a lot of people, and I'm sure they'll be thinking about
what's the best and fairest name for this illness, as they look at all
of the options in front of them.
I forgot your second question. Are you still there? Oh, I think the
question was: What's a good outcome, or what would really be the
best-case scenario here for the whole SARS epidemic? I think the
best-case scenario would be that we would see the virus go away. And
that's not totally implausible as we enter the summer months in at
least the northern hemisphere. But it would be, I think, unrealistic
to count on that.
And that's why our efforts to identify a treatment and ultimately a
vaccine still has to take such a high priority. We are very confident
that we'll make progress in that regard, but it's a question of
whether or not the science and our speed of being able to create those
new products is fast enough to keep up with what has so far been a
pretty rapidly emerging viral infection.
Question over here?
QUESTION: [Inaudible]
DR. GERBERDING: I think I'm going to ask Dr. Anderson to answer that
question for you. Basically, the question has to do with the
coronavirus that we're talking about with SARS, what is the degree of
homology with the known human coronaviruses? Larry, can you take this
question, please.
Again, congratulations for the work that your team has done. It's
really terrific.
DR. ANDERSON: Thanks. I think it's a lot of people at CDC. And also
help from investigators throughout the world. Part of the WHO
collaborating center, and a lot of coronavirologists helped in terms
of strategizing. In terms of the question, how related is this virus
to the known human strains, OC43 and 229E, what, in coronavirus there
has been established three groups that they call 'antigenic groups.'
This virus is like a totally separate group, related to part of the
coronavirus family, but distinct from all the other known coronavirus
-- both animal and the two human strains.
DR. GERBERDING: Thank you.
Let's take a telephone question, please.
MODERATOR: Laura Biel with Dallas Morning News, your line is open.
QUESTION: What is currently known about human metapneumovirus
co-infection and whether that may make the disease more severe or more
transmissible?
DR. GERBERDING: We are looking for the metapneumovirus here and the
other collaborating laboratories are continuing to search for evidence
of this virus and other viral agents that could be contributing in
individual patients to what we're seeing as a variable clinical
picture. Most laboratories are not finding very many patients with
metapneumovirus. And so if it's important, its link is not nearly as
consistent as the link with SARS. But we haven't ruled it out, and we
will continue to look.
I'll take another phone question, please.
MODERATOR: Robin Eisner with msnbc.com. Your line is open.
QUESTION: Yes, Dr. Gerberding, thank you for doing this.
How many other places throughout the world will be doing sequencing of
the coronavirus? And is there an estimation as to when that will all
be done? And then, if it's not related to any animals or human
viruses, how will the sequence data help you find our where this came
from?
DR. GERBERDING: Well, in the short run, I don't think the sequence
data is going to tell us where it came from. We've got some more work
to do. And one of the major steps is we need to go back to the very
first cases of SARS that probably occurred in the Guangdong Province,
and really do the kind of shoe-leather epidemiology that it takes to
know: Who were those people? Where were they? What were they doing?
What life were they leading? What did they come in contact with?
And then, for example, if those patients were in a situation where
they were exposed to animals, or birds, or some other kind of
environment, to go and try to recover viruses from the animal kingdom
that are implicated in that detective story.
That's a lot of work, and we are just beginning to take those steps in
conjunction with the WHO and the partners in China. And so as have
more information there, we will work very hard on identifying the
biological linkages.
But it's a story that's going to unfold over some time, and we're just
not really in a position to guess right now where that's going to lead
us.
Let me take a question over here.
QUESTION: In addition to the work that you just described, what other
immediate practical uses are there going to be for the sequence data?
DR. GERBERDING: The most immediate use is likely to be in enhancing
diagnostic testing. Because once we have detailed information about
the comprehensive genome of the virus, we can make tests that are
based on the PCR, where you take a piece of the virus and you can
amplify it in the test tube, and it makes it easier to detect in
patient tissues.
And we already are doing that test, based on one part of the virus
RNA. But if we know the whole sequence, we can create combinations of
tests or more elaborate tests that are built on the same principle.
And I think getting a rapid diagnostic test is the realistic goal, and
we'll be working very hard with other collaborators and with industry
on doing just that.
I'll take a telephone question, please.
MODERATOR: Steve Mitchell with United Press International. Your line
is open.
QUESTION: The World Health Organization is reporting that this
diagnostic PRC test the CDC is employing is, I think they're saying
several hundred times more sensitive than some of the other PRC tests,
and the CBC might rule it out at the end of this week. Can you comment
on that?
DR. GERBERDING: Well, we are doing a PPR test and that is a test
that's very sensitive; it looks for very tiny pieces of the virus in
very low concentrations. And so, it can be extremely sensitive. But we
are not going to have a licensed diagnostic test this week. I can
assure you of that. The process of getting a test licensed is a
step-wise process, just like getting a drug licensed is a step-wise
process.
What we're doing now is preparing the reagents and optimizing the
method, so that we can get these tests out to the state laboratories
are epidemiologic tools.
In addition the FDA is working side by side with us to get the tests
into an investigational protocol, so that we can use it for making
patient care decisions. And in order to use a test to make a decision
for a patient, it is subject to a bit more scrutiny and more
evaluation than just something that we put out as an epidemiologic
tool.
So that's happening very fast and certainly within a very short period
of time--and I can't tell you exactly when--we'll have that formal
protocol, so that doctors can use this test to diagnose patients in
the actual medical setting.
Finally, getting the fully licensed tests done will take probably
several weeks to a few months. And that's just a matter of validating
accuracy and performance of the tests under a variety of laboratory
conditions.
I'll take a phone question, please.
MODERATOR: Maggie Fox with Reuters. Your line is open.
QUESTION: Well, good timing on that one. Along those lines, a German
company said today that they had developed a rapid PCR test and had
released it to some centers. Can you comment on that?
And also can you comment on some suggestions I've had that perhaps a
test that's been used on some people in China, who were contacts of
SARS patients, who have not developed symptoms yet, and they got a
positive back?
DR. GERBERDING: Well let me first say that I think the more we get
experience with testing, and the more people who are developing tests
and deploying them, the better. So I'm delighted if the Germans have a
good test. That's wonderful, and we really look forward to learning
more about it, and continuing our collaboration in that regard.
There are a lot of tests that are going to be coming out using this
technology. It's a kind of standard recipe for diagnosing infectious
disease these days, and there are little subtle variations from one
test to another. But I think we'll be able to get an optimized test or
tests fairly quickly.
With respect to: Do people have the coronavirus in the absence of
illness? This is a very, very important epidemiologic question for us.
If people are colonized, or carry the coronavirus, and they don't know
it, then we wouldn't necessarily have a reason to isolate them. As it
turns out, the pattern of transmission that we are observing does not
suggest that those people are very important in the spread, because we
can link back the chains of transmission to people with symptomatic
SARS.
But as we have access to better testing, we may learn more about
exactly when people become infectious, and this is certainly one of
the questions that we'll be looking into.
Let me take a phone question, please.
MODERATOR: Kathleen Doheny with LA Times. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Yes. Can you update [Inaudible] preventive measures for
travelers going to or returning from affected areas? And I ask this
because at least one travel product company that I know of is
suggesting antibacterial wipes and a personal air purifier worn around
the neck can help. So can you separate the help from the hype for us,
for travelers?
DR. GERBERDING: Separating the help from the hype is a very difficult
challenge in the absence of all of the data that we would like to
have. So, I would rely on the old fashioned approach, which is
basically common sense.
This is a disease that is spread primarily by face-to-face contact
with infected SARS patients. We don't have any evidence that wearing
any kind of commercial and sometimes air purifier adds anything at all
to the safety of the traveler from SARS, or from any other infectious
disease.
And on the other hand, hand hygiene, whether it's soap and water, or
an alcohol-based hand rub, or some combination of the two, is common
sense, and should be done as a matter of general personal hygiene,
regardless of whether we're in a SARS era or not.
So my advice is to kind of follow the same rules that your mother
taught you in kindergarten. Keep your hands clean, and cover your
mouth with a tissue if you're coughing and sneezing. And use common
sense.
I think we can take one more phone question.
MODERATOR: Mary Harris, ABC news. Your line is open.
QUESTION: Yes.
Dr. Gerberding, I'm wondering if you can comment about the specificity
of the tests you developed, and also when will we know the final name
of the virus?
DR. GERBERDING: The specificity of the various test that we're using
at CDC is still under active investigation, both the PCR-based test as
well as the antibody-based test. That's part of the reason why it
takes time to get them validated and licensed -- because we must know
the sensitivity and the specificity. The only way to know that is to
test lots of people with the disease and lots of people without the
disease. And that's just a matter of taking some time.
In terms of the naming of the virus, remember we have still not
fulfilled the criterion for being absolutely certain that the
coronavirus is the cause of SARS. But we're very close, and continue
to make progress in that regard. When it is time to name this new
coronavirus, it will be decided by an international committee who has
global responsibility for naming new pathogens.
So we'll put in our vote, but so will lots of other investigators. And
we'll let you know when we learn what they decide.
So thank you very much for helping us with this, and as I say all the
time, when we know more, we'll tell you.
Thanks.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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