Chapter 34 : Microbes in the Media

Abstract:

The coronavirus responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may yet have more lessons in store for us. Thus, it would be foolish to dismiss as totally baseless the apocalyptic headlines that swept the world for several months after the disease first appeared in China in 2002-2003. A researcher, from Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Derry, Northern Ireland, highlighted in particular severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Health authorities today might learn from the Aberdeen experience not from its more comical features, perhaps, but from the needless use of measures that were based on an erroneous understanding of the communicability of the disease. Still, some good did come out of Aberdeen: new knowledge about Salmonella entericaserovar Typhi plus insight into another epidemic that occurred many years previously. The bacilli would also betray their presence by "blowing" the cans and/or discoloring the meat. Researchers of what was then called the Enteric Reference Laboratory in London, found that the Aberdeen strain of S. enterica serovar Typhi grew more prolifically than E. coli in corned beef. It could be isolated from both ends of the meat after 3 years of storage and was still widely distributed even after 8 years. Moreover, cans infected with S. enterica serovar Typhi, together with E. coli and Enterobacter cloacae, were not blown, and the meat was not visibly spoiled. The typhoid bacillus thrived better than the other two organisms.