Coronavirus also caused SARS outbreak in 2003. How did North Carolina handle it?
COVID-19 arrived in North Carolina on Tuesday — but it’s not the first case of the coronavirus to hit the Tar Heel State.
The new disease is caused by the same family of viruses that sparked the global SARS outbreak in 2002-03. Nine possible SARS cases — eight suspected and one confirmed — were reported in North Carolina at the time, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
COVID-19 cases worldwide (94,251 as of March 4, according to Johns Hopkins) far surpass what SARS reached (8,422 cases by the end of 2003, according to the World Health Organization), BBC reported.
So far in North Carolina, there have been just as many COVID-19 cases as SARS — exactly one.
SARS in North Carolina
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), like COVID-19, is a respiratory illness caused by coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The SARS outbreak started in Asia in 2002 and was spread through person-to-person contact, the CDC said.
More than 8,000 people in dozens of countries between North and South America, Europe and Asia were infected, and 774 people died. Only eight had “laboratory evidence” of SARS in the United States, according to the CDC.
North Carolina had the eighth case in the U.S., North Carolina Health News reported.
According to a timeline of the outbreak in North Carolina by N.C. DHHS, the first possible cases were reported in Orange and Wake Counties in March 2003. Both eventually tested negative.
There were six more negative case in Wake, Mecklenburg and Iredell counties before a ninth was confirmed positive on June 9, 2003, the University Gazette, a faculty and staff newspaper at UNC-Chapel Hill, reported.
The man had recently been at a hospital in Canada where there was an outbreak, according to Health News. He also worked at UNC-Chapel Hill, the University Gazette reported.
Health News reported up to 200 of his co-workers and family members had potentially been exposed. University employees — many of whom worked in the same building as the man — demanded they be tested, the University Gazette reported.
In response, the university ramped up staffing of UNC Healthlink — where nurses discussed symptoms with potential patients over the phone — to help quell the initial influx of concerns.
But “the CDC was already swamped with a backlog of high-risk cases,” according to the newspaper, and officials were concerned a swarm on the hospitals would trigger an outbreak.
So they set up tents at the park-and-ride lot on Airport Road in Chapel Hill, the University Gazette reported.
“They came in and they were screened initially at a desk outside,” David Weber, an infectious disease physician and professor at UNC, told Health News. “And then once they were seen, they were triaged to three different tents where nurses reviewed their symptoms and issues and their exposures. “
Some of the sicker patients were seen by doctors and a few were transported to the hospital, Health News Reported.
The University Gazette reported the clinic was open for two days. It cost between $40,000 and $50,000 and about 42 people were screened, according to a paper published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
But none ended up having SARS.
What’s next for COVID-19 in North Carolina?
Gov. Roy Cooper’s office announced the first case of coronavirus in the state on Tuesday.
Similar to the previous SARS case, the patient was exposed during a trip to an infected area — a long-term care facility in Washington state where there is a COVID-19 outbreak, the News & Observer reported.
N.C. DHHS has set up a website to post up-to-date information on the coronavirus in North Carolina, and the governor created a task force to prepare for possible infections.
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The U.S. has fought the swine flu, Ebola, Zika virus and a few dangerous flu seasons in the years since the SARS outbreak, all of which helped infectious disease doctors and scientists prepare for something like COVID-19, Health News reported.
Jeff Engel, North Carolina’s former state epidemiologist and now the executive director at the Council of State And Territorial Epidemiologists, told Health News that hospitals and doctors are “as prepared as we can be.”
As for a possible pandemic?
“There’s no preparation for a severe pandemic,” he said, according to Health news. “There’s just not enough capacity anywhere in the world.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 6:22 PM with the headline "Coronavirus also caused SARS outbreak in 2003. How did North Carolina handle it?."
