Study on population immunity to SARS in Guangdong province

  Objective   To analyze epidemic scale and characteristic of the outbreak of SARS, evaluate the risk of exposure to SARS CoV.

  Methods   A total of 7708 cases were divided into 4 groups including clinically confirmed patients, close contacts, animal traders and general people. SARS CoV-IgG was detected by ELISA and IFA. The epidemiological data was analyzed by SPSS.

  Results   Positive rate in 127 clinically confirmed patients group was 66.9%, while 0.88% in close contacts group, 13.4% in animal traders group and 0 in general people. There was higher positive rate of wild animal salesman with 58.9%.The incidence of female close contacts was higher than that of male.

  Conclusion   The positive rate of antibody in whole people was still very low and there were no antibody to SARS CoV in general healthy people. But there exited some cross-reaction antibody to SARS CoV in some people. Contact history was an important factor to the existence of SARS-CoV antibody. There existed recessive infection in close contacts, wild animals maybe the source of SARS.