Article Text
Miscellanea
An outbreak of SARS among healthcare workers
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The recent outbreak of atypical pneumonia, better known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) underscores the importance of occupational health risk to healthcare workers. Within one week, about 50 healthcare workers have contracted the disease, all traced to one index patient. Nurses, doctors, ward assistants, and medical students alike were infected. Despite the general belief of a person-to-person mode of transmission by droplets, the shape of the epidemic curve in the early phase resembled that of a common source outbreak. From preliminary epidemiological evidence, a suspected source of the infection was the nebuliser …