Ottawa checks possible Sars case, Toronto man dies

5.00pm

OTTAWA - Authorities in Canada isolated an Ottawa nurse who might have contracted Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), raising concern about whether the respiratory illness had spread from Toronto, where it has now killed 30 people.

The authorities also said another person had died from Sars in Toronto, bringing the death toll from the disease in Canada to 30.

Robert Cushman, chief medical officer in the Canadian capital, said on Friday he was confident the male nurse in Ottawa did not have severe acute respiratory syndrome since he was not displaying typical symptoms, but he had been isolated in a hospital as a precaution.

"We want to keep this stuff out of here," Cushman said.

Toronto is the only city in Canada -- and the only one outside Asia -- where people have died from Sars, which first surfaced in southern China late last year. More than 750 people have died elsewhere in the world and there are about 8300 Sars cases. The virus has spread to nearly 30 countries.

Ontario said the number of probable Sars cases rose to 43 from 29 and the number of people being monitored for the disease climbed to 149 from 107.

The single suspected Ottawa case pales in comparison with the 7000 people quarantined in Toronto, but the main concern was the possibility that Sars may have spread outside Canada's largest city.

"It's one of those viruses that even when you gain control it takes one case to start it back up," said Dr James Young, Ontario's commissioner of public security.

Canada wants to avoid another travel advisory from the World Health Organisation on Toronto after an earlier advisory was withdrawn in late April. But a US company said on Friday it was halting all business-related travel to Toronto.

Kentucky-based computer printer maker Lexmark International Inc. became the first major company to announce it reinstituted travel restrictions since the WHO on May 26 put Toronto back on its list of Sars-infected areas.

Among factors the WHO considers in its advisories are the number of cases, whether they are rising, whether the disease is spreading outside hospitals and if it is being exported.

The Ottawa nurse, now in isolation, had been working on May 14 when a Toronto woman came into the Ottawa General Hospital with respiratory problems. She was subsequently identified as a suspected Sars case. Tracking others who might have been exposed, Ottawa medical authorities screened all the hospital staff working at the time the woman was X-rayed.

"There are a lot of things in our favour," Cushman told Reuters. "We are confident (that it is not Sars). But we can't be 100 per cent sure, and this is just due diligence."

- REUTERS