SARS alert: Taiwan is preparing for SARS outbreaks. Credit: World Health Organization

One of the nations hit hardest by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Taiwan is strengthening its surveillance and research on the infection, which claimed 180 lives in the country early this year.

Taiwanese scientists are spending about US$58.6 million on developing a SARS vaccine. According to the researchers, preliminary results from the genetic sequence suggest the Taiwanese strain is slightly different from those in other SARS-affected areas, such as Hong Kong and Toronto.

At least 16 different projects on vaccines—including peptide vaccines, recombinant protein vaccines, DNA and viral vector vaccines and killed vaccines—are now under way. “Hopefully, we can finish the feasibility test in the primate model of the different vaccine approaches by next June, and select the best candidate vaccine for clinical trials,” says Mi-Hua Tao of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of Academia Sinica in Taipei.

Researchers are also testing SARS-specific antibodies, horse serum and patients' convalescent serum as potential therapies.

Other teams are focusing on ways to detect the virus. One group has unpublished results showing that antibody detection of purified recombinant proteins of the SARS virus, combined with existing reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), can enhance laboratory confirmation to 72.2% accuracy from 48.1% using RT-PCR alone.

Meanwhile, public health authorities in Taiwan are gearing up for potential SARS outbreaks. In September, Taiwan's Cabinet-level Department of Health announced that those who have fever will be quarantined at home for three days. The Department of Health has also established regulations pertaining to mass movement and rallies. Once probable cases are reported, any indoor gathering of more than 300 people will be prohibited.

Taiwan is also instituting mass vaccination of people above the age of 65, and free flu vaccines will be provided to 300,000 high-risk professionals, including health-care and sanitary workers.