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Study: Rats may have spread SARS in Hong Kong

Hospital Safety Connection, August 27, 2003

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A study published August 16 theorizes that roof rats may have spread the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus in the outbreak at a Hong Kong apartment complex earlier this year, Reuters reports.

Featured in the latest issue of The Lancet, the study by researchers at the Columbia University School of Public Health examined the outbreak involving 321 residents of Amoy Gardens. The more than 150 apartments were located both upwind and downwind of the first person to be infected with SARS, who is called the "index patient."

Other theories, such as contaminated sewage droplets and fecal-oral contact through contaminated surfaces, cannot account for the dose, timing, and distribution of the outbreak, researchers say. The index patient would have had to excrete a huge amount of the virus into the environment to have served as a common source of the epidemic.

Instead, researchers suggest a roof rat that entered the apartment visited by the index patient became infected by contaminated material and then transmitted the virus when running through sewage and water pipes and along clothes lines located outside each apartment.

The SARS coronavirus has been isolated from other animals in China. The virus, detected in rat droppings and in cultures from cats, a dog, and at least one rat in the area, is capable of genetic mutation, researchers say. The study recommends testing of rats in the area for the virus and related antibodies.

For more information on the study, visit http://www.thelancet.com

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