Thursday, September 27, 2012

Blog #5 New Virus Linked to SARS 9/27/12


     A virus strain (quite like SARS) that is carried by bats has scientists stumped and hard at work. A man from Saudi Arabia was killed from this virus and now a man from Qatar has his life in the line because of this strain. This virus is specifically a coronavirus, which as stated above, is the family that contains SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). Usually humans cannot contract this virus from bats, so the fact that a man has already died from the virus has caused a big scramble to find the answers. The goal is to as quickly as possible find out whether or not this virus can become and outbreak epidemic or if it is just a one-case scenario. The Qatar and Saudi Arabian men both had tissues tested and it is confirmed that the virus came from the same strain. It takes about 10 days for effects to noticeably take place on the body. To further test to see exactly what is going on with the virus, testing in monkeys and ferrets will take place.

     This article stated that “Coronaviruses are one cause of the common cold. It’s possible the new virus could be another one of them” (David Brown). It is interesting that this scary of an article is published when the deaths could have been nothing but a virus like the common cold. It seems as though researchers can sometimes be overly worried about these kinds of illnesses from a virus. Testing and possibly killing of animals will take place in order to confirm or deny the possibility that two deaths out of everyone in the world is threat to mass amounts of people. 



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