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Canadian Province Sees
More Cases of Deadly Virus
Excerpt by
Jeffrey Hodgson, Reuters Health
TORONTO (Reuters) - Health
officials in Ontario, Canada's most populous province, identified
on Tuesday another eight probable cases of the deadly and mysterious
SARS pneumonia virus that has killed at least 23 people worldwide.
Province health officials restricted
access to the Toronto hospital where some of the first Canadian
cases appeared and said they may quarantine the homes of several
hundred people who could have been exposed to the illness.
A Toronto school was ordered closed
until March 31 after it was learned there were a number of students
with unexplained fevers consistent with symptoms of the illness,
known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Ontario has now seen 18 probable
cases and five suspected cases of the illness. Three of the probable
cases have died.
Another 25 people, including nurses
and other healthcare staff, are being monitored closely for symptoms.
The healthcare staff and their families are being told to stay
in their homes for up to 10 days.
"We are doing everything we possibly
can to make sure this disease runs out of steam," Dr. Colin D'Cunha,
Ontario's public health commissioner, told a news conference.
The Ontario government has given
public health officers the power to order infected people quarantined.
Health officials in the city of Toronto are following up with
any patients discharged from the Scarborough Grace Hospital after
March 16 to determine if they have any symptoms.
Elsewhere in Canada there is a
probable SARS case in Vancouver and two suspected cases in Alberta.
SARS is widely believed to have
started in southern China late last year before showing up in
Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and Germany in recent weeks,
infecting hundreds.
Suspected cases of SARS have also
been reported in the United States, Britain, France, Australia
and Japan. Scientists at the World Health Organization (WHO) said
they were still puzzled over the cause of the new killer pneumonia
after eight days of testing in 11 laboratories in nine countries.
They have identified two common
viruses as "very strong contenders" for the cause.
Experts in Hong Kong and Germany
have said they believed the sickness was caused by a new virus
from the paramyxovirus family, a large group of microbes that
includes germs that cause measles, mumps and respiratory infections.
Reference
Source 89
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