New York Times:

Three months ago, SARS appeared poised to sweep the world, a mysterious new disease racing out of southern China for which there was no vaccine, cure or diagnostic test.

Today, SARS is disappearing almost as fast, and almost as unpredictably, as it arrived. This week, the World Health Organization declared it under control, with only a handful of cases worldwide in the last week.

The agency's only remaining advisory against travel — to Beijing — is expected to be lifted in a few days. Hong Kong, the city with more cases and deaths relative to its population than anywhere else, has had no new cases since June 2.

1:26:41 PM    comment []  

CNN.com:

The World Health Organization says the worst is over in the fight against SARS less than three months after a global alert triggered an unprecedented worldwide response.

The pneumonia-like disease that spanned China to Canada has killed about 800 people and infected more than 8,000, sending authorities scurrying to contain it through centuries-old measures of isolation, quarantine and travel restrictions.

10:38:50 PM    comment []  

The Star (Malaysia):

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has strongly advised countries to strengthen their surveillance efforts even though the SARS situation worldwide appears to be improving, as there is still a lack of information on the deadly virus.

WHO Medical Officer for Global Alert and Response Dr. Mark Salter said WHO was confident the measures taken by the international community to control the disease were effective, as the organisation had seen a significant decrease in cases around the world.

"But now is not the time to relax with it (SARS) tapering off, but to strengthen and redouble efforts to ensure we detect every case."

9:15:07 PM    comment []  

CTV Newsnet:

Researchers from Alberta's Suffield military base are celebrating a major breakthrough in the struggle to crack the SARS virus -- they have become the first ever to snag fragments of the deadly disease from the air.

While the findings don't resolve the question of whether severe acute respiratory syndrome can be spread through airborne infection, experts say they do show the virus can be in the air.

2:18:02 PM    comment []  

MSNBC:

It happens again and again. Strange and frightening new infections seem to appear out of nowhere, such as Lyme disease, Ebola and, of course, AIDS. With monkeypox coming on the heels of SARS, which emerged not long after West Nile, it's a phenomenon that seems to be happening at an accelerating rate.

...

"There are probably hundreds, if not thousands -- maybe even millions of viruses out there," said Robert G. Webster, a leading virologist at the St. Jude Children?s Research Hospital in Memphis. "We don't even know they're there until we disturb them. SARS is probably just a gentle breeze of what one of these big ones is going to do someday."

Frightening.

-Tim

10:30:03 PM    comment []  

ABCNEWS.com:

A cure for SARS is unlikely soon, a World Health Organization official said Saturday at a conference that failed to agree on how to treat the deadly virus.

9:48:21 PM    comment []  

Discovery Health:

A major ingredient in licorice has proven remarkably successful at combatting the SARS virus in lab-dish tests, according to a German study reported on Saturday in the British weekly journal The Lancet.

Glycyrrhizin, a compound extracted from licorice roots which has been previously explored in anti-viral research, was highly effective at stopping the SARS virus from reproducing, the authors say.

6:23:28 PM    comment []  

San Francisco Chronicle:

Emerging infectious diseases such as West Nile virus, SARS and monkeypox are "the new normal," the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday, adding that the national public health system must change its approach to medicine to respond to this emerging threat.

3:47:27 PM    comment []  

New York Times:

Monkeypox, a viral disease related to smallpox but less infectious and less deadly, has been detected for the first time in the Americas, with at least 23 cases reported in three Midwestern states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.

Wisconsin reported 18 cases (15 suspected and 3 confirmed); Illinois reported four (one confirmed); and Indiana reported a single case. The patients ranged in age from 4 to 48 and became ill from May 15 to June 3. All had had direct or close contact with ill prairie dogs, which have become a fad in the exotic-pet market and which might have caught monkeypox from another species, possibly Gambian giant pouched rats; the rats are imported as pets from West or Central Africa, where the disease has long occurred. Monkeypox in Africa is carried mainly by squirrels but named after monkeys because it often kills them.

5:05:47 PM    comment []  

As health officials from Toronto to Taiwan struggle to contain SARS through measures like quarantines and the prohibition of spitting in public places, scientists are piecing together clues about the virus, its genome, and its origins....

1:40:36 PM    comment []