“Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory illness caused by a coronavirus, called SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) [10]. According to the CDC, SARS began in February 2003, it wasn’t until March that the WHO backdated it til the “end of February 2003. According to WHO February 2003 Weekly Epidemiological Reports (WERs) [12] they mention reports of atypical pheumonia in China but Chinese officials designated the cause as chlamydia pneumoniae, which was found in 2 patients who died. [11]
WHO records from November 2002 to February 2003 reveal people in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong started to become ill from atypical pneumonia, China played down the illness. [1, 2, 3, 4]
On March 16, 2003 the WHO had released their website with the Case Definition as reported, the first recognized case was from Hanoi, Vietnam dated mid-February – not China. At a March 25, 2003 WHO press conference it was claimed they were 10 days into an outbreak, making the official start of the SARS outbreak on March 15, 2003.
A novel coronavirus was discovered through complete viral genome sequence and was characterised as SARS-CoV and published by May 30, 2003.
The illness spread to more than two dozen countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia before the SARS global outbreak of 2003 was contained
Contact with a doctor from China is said to have “seeded” the SARS pandemic with a 10% mortality rate. The virus origin is unknown. [9]
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a total of 8,098 people worldwide became sick with SARS during the 2003 outbreak. Of these, 774 died. The US had 8 confirmed infections. [5, 6, 7, 8] Since 2004, there has been no known SARS transmission anywhere in the world.
Dr David Martin, stated that the WHO declared SARS eradicated in 2008, but I was unable to find a reference, though interestingly in October 2019 the question about SARS eradication was asked.
Coronaviruses were mostly known for causing common colds. “The SARS outbreak was a game changer,” says Linfa Wang, formally of CSIRO Australia, it caused coronaviruses to now receive global “public health” attention and research funding.
SARS timeline >>>