Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Symptoms
By Mayo Clinic staffSARS begins with a fever that usually occurs two to seven days after you've been infected, although it may not appear for up to 10 days. Initial signs and symptoms include:
- Fever, 100.4 F (38 C) or higher
- Chills
- Muscle soreness
- Headache
- General feeling of discomfort
Two to seven days after the initial signs and symptoms, you're likely to develop a dry cough. In some people, SARS may progress to severe pneumonia, leading to an insufficient amount of oxygen in the blood (hypoxemia).
You're probably most contagious while you have active signs and symptoms. As a precaution, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people who have recovered from SARS avoid going out in public for 10 days after symptoms go away.
When to see a doctor
If you think you've been exposed to or have SARS, see your doctor right away. SARS is a serious illness that can lead to death. It's also important that if you have the disease, that you not spread it to others.
- Hirsch MS, et al. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Nov. 17, 2008.
- Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS): Current SARS situation. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/nciDOD/sars/situation.htm. Accessed Nov. 17, 2008.
- Hui DS, et al. Current features, pathogenesis and immunobiology of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Current Opinion in Pulmonary Medicine. 2008;14:241.
- Severe acute respiratory syndrome: Frequently asked questions about SARS. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/faq.htm. Accessed Nov. 18, 2008.
- Frequently asked questions on severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/csr/sars/sarsfaq/en. Accessed Nov. 18, 2008.
- Clinical, epidemiologic, and virologic features of SARS-CoV. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/guidance/core/app1.htm. Accessed Nov. 19, 2008.
- Tansey CM, et al. One-year outcomes and health care utilization in survivors of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Archives of Internal Medicine. 2007;167:1312.
- Wong SS, et al. The management of coronavirus infections with particular reference to SARS. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. 2008;62:437.
- Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Supplement F: Laboratory guidance. Diagnostic assays. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/guidance/F/assays.htm. Accessed Nov. 19, 2008.
- Chu CM, et al. Role of lopinavir/ritonavir in the treatment of SARS: Initial virological and clinical findings. Thorax. 2004;59:252.
- Guidance about severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) for persons traveling to areas where SARS cases have been reported. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/travel_advice.htm. Accessed Nov. 25, 2008.
- Stockman LJ, et al. Severe acute respiratory syndrome in children. The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. 2007;26:68.
