WASHINGTON: With winter nearing, federal health officials are making elaborate preparations in anticipation of another outbreak of Sars, the flu-like illness that erupted for the first time last year and for which there remains no specific treatment, vaccine or medically useful diagnostic test.

The preparations include crash programmes to discover drugs effective against Sars and the creation of teams with expertize in isolating airplanes, hospitals or other settings where the disease might appear. The plans were outlined on Friday by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding.

Central to the preparations, the CDC is close to finalizing guidelines for doctors and hospitals on how to deal with suspected cases of Sars. But drafts of those guidelines have stirred controversy, other experts said, because of differences of opinion about whether masks and other isolation practices should be required when Sars is suspected, as well as concerns about who will pay the extra costs in an age of tight hospital budgets and a severe nursing shortage.

Complicating matters, experts said, scientists still don’t know how much protection is gained through masks, gloves and other isolation techniques.

“This disease is very new. We didn’t know anything about it a year ago,” Thompson said. It’s not known if Sars will even reappear this year, though many health officials say they’d be surprised if it doesn’t.

Gerberding said US scientists and their counterparts overseas are drafting “a comprehensive set of documents detailing the collective wisdom” on Sars, such as how to identify and treat infections and how to keep the disease from spreading — including how to isolate infected air passengers with minimal impact on the travel industry.

—Dawn/The LAT- WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.