Canada faces Sars, mad cow
2003-05-23 21:56
Toronto - Canada on Friday battled the double threat of new cases of the SARS virus in Toronto and an outbreak of mad cow disease in the west of the country, sparking desperate hunts to find the source of each.
Beef and tourism industries, meanwhile, were hoping for better days ahead as their business continued to suffer from these stigmas.
Officials, who have been fighting severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) since March, reported late on Thursday four new suspected Sars cases, more than one month after the last new case here and with apparently no ties to any previous Sars case.
Canada, the country hardest hit by Sars outside Asia, has had 24 Sars-linked deaths, all of them around Toronto.
"They have no clear epidemiological link. ... It is not clear what the source of the infection was," said Toronto's associate medical officer of health, Dr Barbara Yaffe.
"What we are clear about is that it was not community acquired. It is either travel related or health care institution related," she told reporters here on Friday, noting that one of the individuals returned from China in late April.
However, that calls into question the Sars incubation period, but Yaffe said officials still believe the incubation period lasts only 10 days.
She said they would be re-interviewing the individuals and families to see if they can glean more about how and when the four - including one health care worker - may have become infected.
Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman, promoting his city as a tourist destination late on Thursday, admitted the new cases were a setback.
"We don't want to (have) happen today what happened before," he said, pressing anyone who may have visited St John's Rehabilitation Hospital between May 9 and May 20 to voluntarily quarantine themselves.
Yaffe said 40 more health care workers would be hired to track down the few hundred who may need to go into quarantine.
Mad cow disease
As the search for the source of the new Sars cases occupied officials in Canada's largest city, others in western Canada were probing how one Alberta cow became infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
The black Angus cow, killed in late January, was confirmed Tuesday to have the disease, which wrecked havoc on the British cattle industry in the 1990s.
The news triggered bans on the importation of Canadian beef by several countries, including by the United States, Canada's major market for exported beef and cattle.
Investigators from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have quarantined at least seven herds in Alberta and Saskatchewan to try to determine where the cow - believed to be either six or eight years old - was born and how it may have contracted the illness.
CBC television reported midday on Friday that the mad cow investigation has spread to a third province, British Columbia, where three farms were being quarantined.
"The ongoing investigation into the cause of this incident of BSE is now focusing on confirmation of the cow's birthplace and the history of the feeding practices and sources of animal feed for this cow," said the CFIA's Claude Lavigne.
"We are not absolutely sure at this time where the cow was born," he said on Thursday.
If the cow is confirmed to have been born in Canada, it would become the first homegrown case of mad cow disease in North America.
In 1993, there had been one case of mad cow disease in Canada but it stemmed from a cow imported from Britain.
Meanwhile, businesses affected by both threats continue to hope for a speedy recovery.
"Make no mistake, Toronto's hotel industry is reeling," Rod Seiling, the president of the Greater Toronto Hotel Association said, according to the Toronto Star. So far, the industry has lost C$125m (US$91m) and laid off about 12 000 workers.
The Canadian Cattlemen's Association, meanwhile, encouraged Canadians to show their support for their industry "by continuing to enjoy" Canadian beef as more international markets shut their doors to it.
- AFX