Containment
The World Health Organization declared severe acute respiratory syndrome contained on 5 July 2003. The containment was achieved through successful public health measures. In the following months, four SARS cases were reported in China between December 2003 and January 2004.While SARS-CoV-1 probably persists as a potential zoonotic threat in its original animal reservoir, human-to-human transmission of this virus may be considered eradicated because no human case has been documented since four minor, brief, subsequent outbreaks in 2004. Laboratory accidents
After containment, there were four laboratory accidents that resulted in infections. One postdoctoral student at the National University of Singapore in Singapore in August 2003
A 44-year-old senior scientist at the National Defense University in Taipei in December 2003. He was confirmed to have the SARS virus after working on a SARS study in Taiwans only BSL-4 lab. The Taiwan CDC later stated the infection occurred due to laboratory misconduct. Two researchers at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing, China around April 2004, who spread it to around six other people. The two researchers contracted it 2 weeks apart.Study of live SARS specimens requires a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) facility; some studies of inactivated SARS specimens can be done at biosafety level 2 facilities. Society and culture
Fear of contracting the virus from consuming infected wild animals resulted in public bans and reduced business for meat markets in southern China and Hong Kong.
China officially apologized for early slowness in dealing with the SARS epidemic.The viral outbreak was subsequently genetically traced to a colony of cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan.The outbreak first came to the attention of the international medical community on 27 November 2002, when Canadas Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), an electronic warning system that is part of the World Health Organizations Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), picked up reports of a "flu outbreak" in China through Internet media monitoring and analysis and sent them to the WHO. While GPHINs capability had recently been upgraded to enable Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish translation, the system was limited to English or French in presenting this information. Thus, while the first reports of an unusual outbreak were in Chinese, an English report was not generated until 21 January 2003. The first super-spreader was admitted to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital in Guangzhou on 31 January, which soon spread the disease to nearby hospitals.In early April 2003, after a prominent physician, Jiang Yanyong, pushed to report the danger to China, there appeared to be a change in official policy when SARS began to receive a much greater prominence in the official media. Some have directly attributed this to the death of an American teacher, James Earl Salisbury, in Hong Kong. It was around this same time that Jiang Yanyong made accusations regarding the undercounting of cases in Beijing military hospitals.