The main objective of this 36-month project is to prevent future SARS epidemics through control of animal and human infection. While a lot of attention will be given to the identification and control of the animal reservoir, it is expected that SARS outbreaks may occur, and analysis on the past epidemic data may provide important clues for the control of future outbreaks. The work programme has been divided along these lines into two work programmes: the first work programme will deal with the search of the animal reservoir, and the second work programme with the control of future SARS outbreaks among humans. The link between the two work programmes will be the molecular epidemiology studies comparing animal and human SARS-related CoV.
Additional work packages will deal with the synthesis of information available for the formulation of public health recommendations for disease control, and dissemination of the information.