Epidemics in a Changing World - Department of Innovation, Industry ...

Many of these are completely new infectious agents and their appearance was unexpected.
Figure 3 depicts viruses that have been recently discovered. An example of a recently emergent
virus is provided in Text Box 2.
EpidemICs in a Changing World
Report of the Expert Working Group
4
Figure 3: Emergent viruses identified since 1994
Source: John Mackenzie (pers.comm.)
Text Box 2: SARS – unexpected and unknown
SARS was the first severe and readily transmissible new human disease to emerge in
the 21st century. Initially recognised as a global pandemic threat in mid March, 2003,
SARS was successfully contained in less than four months, largely because of an
unprecedented level of international collaboration and cooperation. However, those
four months were characterised by economic and health system chaos in a number
of affected countries, particularly in the Asian region. Of 8000 cases, 774 deaths were
reported from 39 countries.
The cause of the disease was initially unknown; tests for all known infectious agents
were negative. The World Health Organization (WHO) established a series of virtual
networks of specialists to discuss epidemiological, clinical, laboratory, and other
aspects of the outbreak. Through this system, a previously unrecognised coronavirus
was discovered as the cause, and transmission was found to occur only after several
days of illness, through inhalation of large droplets. It then proved relatively simple to
contain the outbreak through good infection control practices.
(John Mackenzie, pers.comm.)