SARS Not Found in 12 Quarantined at TX Air Base

July 17, 2003

(CNN) -- Preliminary tests show that none of 12 people quarantined with symptoms of SARS at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, have the respiratory disease, the Air Force announced Thursday.

More tests are being conducted and definitive results may not be available for up to three weeks, the Air Force said in a news release.

All 12 are either symptom free or are improving, the release said, but they must remain in their homes until released by medical authorities.

The Air Force is following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidelines that suspected SARS patients be isolated for 10 days after their last symptom has abated. Family members caring for them have been given masks and rubber gloves.

The quarantine began about a week ago after health officials learned that three of the people reporting respiratory symptoms had traveled through the airport in Toronto, Ontario, where an outbreak of SARS occurred earlier this year.

Three of those quarantine had traveled through the Toronto airport July 1, county health authorities said. At the time, both the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had issued travel warnings for Toronto because of a SARS outbreak in Canada's largest city. Those warnings have since been lifted.

At the time, Dr. James Young, Ontario's commissioner of public safety, said there is "very, very little possibility" that they could have contracted the illness there because the outbreak was contained well before they were in Toronto.

"We've had no cases whatsoever at the airport," he said. "We've [not] had transmission in Toronto since the 12th of June."

The Air Force doctor in charge of the patients, 7th Medical Group commander, Col. Schuyler Geller, agreed Thursday that the possibility was remote.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, which is caused by a virus and spread though close personal contact, is potentially fatal, though most patients recover. The disease emerged late last year in China and spread to other Asian countries and North America.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/07/17/air.force.sars/index.html