HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said that his department and the Centers for Disease Control , the National Institutes of Health and state health officials are working together to track and contain the disease and to find a cure.

The atmosphere in the hearing room was tense, as Rep. Christopher Shays, vice chair of the House Committee on Government Reform, and others barked questions at Thompson and his staff.

Pressed for details of what would happen if there was a case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in a particular district in Connecticut, Thompson reiterated that his department is working with various other government health institutions. In addition, he highlighted the CDC’s “brand new communications war room,” from which the disease can be tracked and monitored.

“I know the claim,” Shays said at one point, after Thompson stated that the CDC would be informed of any incident of patients with SARS symptoms anywhere in the U.S. hospital system. “I’m just a little concerned that in reality that’s not happening.”

Shays worried that the federal agencies’ ability to respond, however, would only be as good as the information they received. He questioned Thompson repeatedly about whether there was any legal requirement for state hospital systems to report the appearance of cases that resemble SARS to the CDC.

Thompson said that there were no laws but that there were agreements and understandings to work together.

“The stakes are so high,” Shays said, “you need to have some authority that is clear,” not just an “understanding.” Thompson consistently replied that state hospitals were co-operating fully and voluntarily with federal efforts to contain SARS.
The newness of the disease and lack of information about how it is spread has heightened concern about how the nation will respond if there is a SARS epidemic.

Legislators bombarded Thompson with questions: Is there enough money to contain an outbreak? How does the disease spread? How contagious is it?

There were few firm answers.

Thompson emphasized that it was government researchers at the CDC who h discovered the type of virus, known as a coronavirus, responsible for the disease. At least, he said, they were 99 percent certain. The next step in the research effort, he said, was to develop a reliable test for the syndrome. He pointed out that of the 154 U.S. deaths attributed to SARS at the time of the meeting, only “a handful” had been positively diagnosed.

The CDC and the National Institutes of Health are working on two different approaches to a SARS test, one that is an antibody test, and another that uses Polymerase Chain Reaction, the process made famous by its role in “DNA fingerprinting.”

Thompson also stressed efforts at vaccine development – he had to leave the hearing early to go to a meeting with the heads of several vaccine manufacturers, he said – and expressed hope that a cure could be found for the syndrome.

However, many viruses, including the common cold, to which SARS appears similar, have resisted the efforts of science to find a cure. Thompson told the committee that containment of the virus was the first and most effective strategy.

SARS appears to have originated in Guangdong province in southern China around November of 2002, and been transmitted to other areas, including Honk Kong, Hanoi, Vietnam, and Singapore, Thompson said. Most of the SARS cases in the U.S. have either involved travelers who had come from one of those areas, or the health care workers who have treated them, Thompson also said. He added that the virus appears to be spread by face-to-face contact, but that researchers aren’t positive.

Committee members also asked about whether SARS containment should take precedence over funding for smallpox preparedness in the federal budget, and whether the Chinese Ministry of Health should be held accountable for apparently dragging its feet on alerting the world to the threat posed by SARS.