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International Conference on SARS - one year after the (first) outbreak

08. - 11.05.2004, Lübeck

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Epidemiological analysis on the family-clustered SARS cases in Guangdong

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  • presenting/speaker Wen-Jia Liang - Center for Disease Prevention and Control of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, P.R. China
  • Jian-Feng He - Center for Disease Prevention and Control of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, P.R. China
  • Guo-Wen Peng - Center for Disease Prevention and Control of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, P.R. China
  • Runing Guo - Center for Disease Prevention and Control of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, P.R. China
  • Linghui Li - Center for Disease Prevention and Control of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, P.R. China
  • Dewen Yu - Center for Disease Prevention and Control of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, P.R. China

International Conference on SARS - one year after the (first) outbreak. Lübeck, 08.-11.05.2004. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2004. Doc04sars2.05

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/sars2004/04sars011.shtml

Published: May 26, 2004

© 2004 Liang et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Objective: To understand the epidemiological characteristics of family-clustered SARS cases in Guangdong Province, and to reveal the determinants on the disease transmission.

Methods: The epidemiological characteristics of the family-clustered SARS cases in Guangdong province were investigated by uniform questionnaires.

Results: A total of 191 family-clustered SARS cases with 60 families involved, accounting for 12.6% of all SARS cases, were reported. About 90.6%(173/191) of the cases occurred from January to March 2003. The mortality(9.9%) of them was higher than the general SARS specific mortality (3.7%,P<0.01).About 52.9%(101/191) of the cases aged 30-49 and 13.6%(26/191) of the cases were health care workers, followed by food preparing staffs, accounting for 12.6%(24/191).The first cases from 41.7% of the involved families had apparent or suspect exposure.91 secondary cases from 42 families may be infected during patient accompanying or visiting , accounting for 71.3%.The median of the time interval between the first case and the secondary cases was 7 days.

Conclusion: Family-clustered cases had the comparatively higher fatality, and family-based infection was mainly obtained in hospital.