Finally SARS case has shown its presence in India with the confirmed reports coming from National Institute of Virology, Pune. Talking to this reporter, NIV Director, Dr. A.C. Mishra said "We have sent the reports to the Health Minister Sushma Swaraj that confirmed the presence of the virus believed to be the cause of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in biological specimen of a suspected case (Indian nationality) referred from Goa."
According to the reports made available to the NIV, the person has been travelling in a ship for last eight months. He was recently in Hong Kong on 26th March, in Singapore on 30th March and arrived by air in Mumbai on 30th march and reached Goa on 1st April. He developed fever on 8th April and consulted a private practitioner who diagnosed him as having pneumo-thorax and referred him to Goa Medical College on 10th April. Dr. Mishra said when the patient reported to the hospital he did not have either cough, or shortness of breath or difficulty in breathing. His fever came down on 11 April and the hospital collected his blood, throat swab and urine samples on 12th April.
All the samples were processed for detection of SARS cornavirus by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). All tested positive, indicating the presence of the genetic material of the virus (108bp) in the biological samples, said Dr. Mishra. The primers used for the tests are very specific for the new virus. They were obtained from Tib-Molbiol, Berlin, Germany.
Recently, WHO announced that this new virus belonging to the cornavirus family is the cause of SARS. Till yesterday 3293 cases have been reported to the WHO by 24 countries and there have been 159 deaths. "Local transmission have been reported from eight countries viz. Canada, China, China-Honkong Special Administrative Region, China- Taiwan, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam,'' said Dr. Mishra.