Follow-up study on the infectiousness of the convalescent patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)

AIM: To study the infectiousness of the convalescent patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). METHODS: Standardized epidemiological follow-up study questionnaire was adopted in the follow-up study by phone of the convalescent (1 month after discharge) patients who were reported during April and May 2003 in database of epidemiological individual cases with SARS in Beijing. Data of investigation were processed to build database for statistical and epidemiological analysis. RESULTS: In the 300 cases that were selected randomly, 133 cases ( 44.3%) who had been diagnosed with SARS were successfully followed up, with a sex ratio of 1∶1.2 and an age range from 15 to 66. 167 cases (55.7%) were lost in the follow-up study. The most common symptom was fever (100%), followed by cough (72.2%), pneumonia on chest radiograph (70.7%), decreased leukocyte counts (66.9%), cold (54.9%), inertia (35.3%), headache (23.3%), aching pain (21.2%), expectoration (9.8%). Ninety-four percent of the 133 SARS cases adopted home isolation after being discharged from hospital, among whom 98 cases (78.4 percent of isolated cases) were isolated for 14 days. The infection control precautions could be divided into 6 categories. None those who had close contacts with convalescent SARS patients were infected. CONCLUSION: The convalescent SARS patients, who are discharged from hospital according to the discharge criteria for SARS patients promulgated by ministry of health, have no obvious infectiousness.