First Sars deaths in Philippines, Canada's toll climbs

11.45am

TORONTO/BEIJING - The Philippines has reported its first fatalities from SARS while in Canada three more people died from the deadly flu-like disease despite officials upbeat assessment this week that it was coming under control.

The Philippines Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit confirmed a nursing assistant and her father died of SARS this month after the daughter returned from Toronto.

In Toronto, Canada's biggest city, authorities reported three more deaths from the disease and eight new cases among health care workers, bringing Canada's death toll to 19.

"We're not entirely out of the woods on everything, but we're moving along day by day," Dr Jim Young, Ontario's commissioner of public safety, told a news conference.

Asian health chiefs met in Malaysia on ways to tackle the disease, trying to standardise how they tackle SARS -- for which there is no known cure -- and prepare for a Bangkok SARS summit of the 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations and China next Tuesday.

SARS, a respiratory infection with a mortality rate of about 6 per cent, has killed at least 278 people and infected about 4800 in 25 nations.

It spreads via coughs and sneezes but can also be transmitted by touching contaminated objects such as elevator buttons.

The disease has caused widespread alarm in mainland China and in Hong Kong, each of which has reported 115 deaths.

In New Zealand the Health Ministry today upgraded Taiwan's risk level from three to two, in light of an increase in Sars transmission on the island off mainland China.

Level two areas are now Taiwan, Singapore and Toronto in Canada, which have a moderate risk of transmission and the ministry advises people should consider postponing non-essential travel to those places.

Reports from Taiwan's capital, Taipei, showed the number of notifications of Sars had increased from 205 to 234, while confirmed cases increased from 38 to 41 and suspected cases from 50 to 60, the ministry said in a statement.

Taipei's Ho Ping Hospital had been closed and quarantined for 14 days. About 1100 people were inside but Taipei had reported no New Zealanders were among them.

Taiwanese authorities sealed the Municipal Hospital after more than 25 suspected SARS cases were discovered.

Many caught in the hospital were furious. "I am not sick. Why should I be quarantined?" a nurse shouted at reporters.

Taiwan has strong business and ethnic ties with China and Hong Kong and has added to precautions by suspending landing visas for Hong Kong residents for one month starting at midnight on Friday.

In Hong Kong, the acting head of the Hospital Authority, Ko Wing-man, offered to resign for not doing enough to stop the spread of SARS, but a US health expert advising the government said any health authority "will be hard pressed to deal with something like this."

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, criticised for vacationing in the Caribbean during the height of the crisis, said the WHO was wrong to warn against non-essential travel to Toronto, the epicentre of SARS in Canada.

To prove the point, he said he would sleep in Toronto on Monday night and shift Tuesday's Cabinet meeting there from the capital, Ottawa. He also said new anti-SARS measures would be announced next week.

"We all believe that the World Health Organisation came to the wrong conclusion. We believe that Toronto is a good place to visit. It is a safe city," Chretien said.

Canadian officials bitterly contested the travel warning, saying the disease was not being spread freely in the metropolitan Toronto area of about 5 million people.

There were 335 probable and suspect SARS cases in Canada, while 10,000 people had gone into voluntary quarantine since the outbreak began in March.

The New York Times backed Canada. "It looks safe for Americans to travel to Toronto without fearing that they will come into contact with SARS patients," the newspaper said in an editorial on Friday.

The WHO justified the warning against Toronto because the country was exporting cases to the world, and the Philippines confirmed on Friday a nursing assistant and her father died of SARS this month after the daughter returned from Toronto.

WHO contagious diseases expert Dr David Heymann said travel advisories help keep the disease from spreading to countries whose health systems would have trouble coping.

"So, our recommendations are not made for one or two specific countries. They're made for a global community in which everyone must be a partner," he told a daily briefing.

Another WHO official said SARS could become a horrifying epidemic if it spread in China or in nations like India and Bangladesh, where people live closely together with poor medical facilities.

"There will be various countries in the world where we would be really concerned because we don't think they have the capacity to stem the tide once it is introduced," WHO official Wolfgang Preiser told reporters in Shanghai.

In Toronto, there was more anger than panic, with medical officials speaking out against the WHO warning, and citizens, very few wearing masks, going about their business.

"My life hasn't changed," said Debbie Tillman, a bank worker travelling in Toronto's subway. "I'm still shopping, seeing movies and going to watch hockey."

The economic fallout from SARS spread across the globe, weighing on stock prices and currencies. In New York, SARS added to the gloom for investors.

"Stocks are slip sliding away today as investors wring their hands over a number of concerns, ranging from a less-than-encouraging GDP report to the worldwide SARS epidemic," said Tom Reynolds, analyst with Schaeffer's Investment Research, in his market update.

Airlines, already suffering from the effects of the war in Iraq, were hit as businesses cut travel to SARS hot spots.

- REUTERS, NZPA