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Canada back on Sars list
27/05/2003 10:56 - (SA)
Toronto - Dwindling Sars numbers across Asia fuelled hopes the deadly virus was on the run, but optimism was tempered as a clutch of new cases in Canada raised the spectre of a possible global resurgence.
Canada's largest city, Toronto, found itself back on the World Health Organisation list of Sars-affected areas on Monday but not on WHO's travel advisory list, a senior Canadian official said.
Paul Gully, senior director of the population and public health branch at the federal Department of Health, said the decision was taken by the WHO in Geneva after Canada reported at the weekend eight new probable severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) cases and 26 suspect cases, all in Toronto.
They are the first new probable cases reported since April 19.
Gully insisted that "there is not a travel advisory against Canada at this time".
As a precautionary measure, Toronto officials have asked more than 800 people to go into quarantine to see if Sars symptoms develop after visiting or working in any of four Toronto hospitals tied to the latest Sars outbreak.
At the weekend, health officials in Toronto said three more deaths have been linked to the Sars virus in Canada, bringing the nationwide death toll to 27.
Asian hotspots have meanwhile begun to pick up the pieces after what appears to be a slackening in the spread of the disease.
On Friday the WHO lifted an advisory against travel to Hong Kong and southern China's Guangdong province, Sars is believed to have originated in November.
Only two new infections have been reported in Hong Kong since the advisory was removed, prompting the former British colony to draft plans to revitalise its badly-hit tourism and business sectors.
In China, which has a nationwide Sars death toll of 317, half in Beijing, authorities claimed the disease was largely contained to the capital as tumbling infection rates eased fears of a countrywide mass infection.
China reported just eight new Sars cases and two more deaths on Monday, the lowest number since the government began publishing daily figures on April 20.
The new low was welcomed by a cautious World Health Organisation, which warned the disease was still "ticking over in the background".
"There is no way you can predict when it will resurface," said WHO's spokesperson in China, Bob Dietz. "The figures are down. It is very reassuring, but again we have to be cautious. We must remain wary."
In another blow to China's prestige, the women's football World Cup, scheduled for September/October 2003, has been re-located from China to the United States because of concerns over Sars, world governing body Fifa said.
In Taiwan, where officials insist the outbreak is coming under control, a leading Taipei health manager became the third senior government official to quit over the handling of the island's Sars crisis.
Chiu Shu-ti, Taipei's health chief, tendered her resignation as the island reported 15 new cases of the respiratory illness on Monday, bringing the country's caseload to 585. So far, 72 people have died from the illness on the island.
The new cases, well below the record 65 announced on Thursday, helped buoy Taipei's main share index by 2.67%, or 116.05 points, to finish at 4 465.57.
Taiwan's government meanwhile announced it was to provide combined relief loans totalling T$11.5bn ($331.4m) to six domestic air carriers gripped by the Sars epidemic.
In Singapore, where Sars has killed 31 people out of 206 cases, leaders were warning of the need for a stimulus package to breathe new life into an economy ravaged by the disease.
Meanwhile in Germany, a research institute claimed to have developed a new test for Sars which can detect whether antibodies against the virus have formed in the blood.
The test is "an important step in postively diagnosing the disease and for studying the way the epidemic spreads," said Reinhard Kurth, president of the Robert Koch Institute.
- AFX
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