Up Close and Personal With SARS

摘要

Hong Kong―For a virus hunter, Hong Kong in the spring of 2003 was the right place and the right time. And virologist Malik Peiris, colleagues around the world are saying, proved to be the right person. Peiris and his team at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) were the first to isolate the agent causing severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, early in the week of 17 March―although at first they didn't know exactly what they had. And the Hong Kong lab was one of three groups that several days later―and within hours of each other―identified the culprit as a new corona-virus. Peiris and his team were amused and a little irritated when one of the groups issued a press release on 24 March touting its detective prowess without crediting the other two groups. But having to share some credit doesn't detract from the pride Peiris feels "in the group and the job we did." Regardless of bragging rights, fellow disease detectives say the contributions of the HKU group highlight the importance of having a first-rate research team on the ground near the source of an outbreak. "Without Malik, we would know much less about SARS," says Christian Drosten, a virolo-gist at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, whose lab is part of a global network seeking the cause of SARS under the sponsorship of the World Health Organization (WHO). Virologist Klaus Stoehr, the network coordinator, simply says that Peiris "is one who produces and delivers."