Impact of SARS-2 in areas where SARS-1 was prevalent in 2002-04?

[mktsgm]

TL;DR Summary

How the SARS-CoV-2 has affected the area where the SARS-CoV-1 had affected in 2002-04? Was it more severe or less severe?

We know that SARS-CoV-1 affected the world in 2002-04. Many countries including China were affected then.

I want to know, how the SARS-CoV-2 is faring now, in the areas which had already been affected by SARS-CoV-1 earlier. Dr. Beda M Stadler the former director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Bern, has recently mentioned as

"It also became known that Sars-CoV-2 had a less significant impact in areas in China where Sars-1 had previously raged"

in a recent article in the Swiss magazine Weltwoche (World Week) on June 10th.

Do we have more data on these lines? Was there any study to prove this hypothesis?

Similarly do we have any study on the impact of SARS-CoV-2 in the areas where MERS (2012-13) was more prevalent?

Thanks.

 

[Andrew Mason]

First of all SARS-1 did not affect very many people even in the "hotspots". The outbreak in Toronto was one of the largest outside of China and it had about 400 cases. There were a total of about 8000 cases worldwide. So I don't think it is possible to make any obvious conclusions.

Furthermore, Toronto had a high infection rate of COVID-19 (15000 cases).

Since China's population is around 1.4 billion it would not be possible to conclude anything without looking at infection rates among SARS-1 survivors.

There were even fewer MERS cases (about 2500) and proportionately fewer survivors with a death toll of around 900.

AM

 

[mktsgm]

Point taken. Thanks

 

[Laroxe]

Actually this has become an interesting subject area, some very recent work not only suggests significant cross immunity with SARS but immunity in populations exposed to neither of these viruses. They ruled out the other coronaviruses that infect humans as the reason for this but identified a Coronavirus that infects animals as a possible cause. If this is confirmed it has huge implications for future vaccine work.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z