Student sparks school Sars alert

By RAJIV SEKHR in Toronto

Canadian officials will discuss today whether the deadly Sars virus escaped from hospitals to the broader community after a Toronto high-school student went to class last week with symptoms of the illness.

Health services said yesterday they would hold a news conference to discuss "possible Sars exposure" at the school, as authorities tried to contact everyone who attended the school between last Thursday and last Saturday New Zealand time.

The investigation into a possible case at the school comes as medical staff at some Toronto hospitals, fearing they allowed severe acute respiratory syndrome back into a city that thought the battle was over, have resumed donning face masks and layers of gloves to guard against the virus.

The World Health Organisation has restored Toronto to its list of Sars-affected areas, 12 days after it had been taken off.

Masks first came off in mid-May in all hospital departments except Sars wards, because officials thought that it had stopped spreading.

But doctors now think the mystery virus lingered in at least one ward for weeks, infecting patients, nurses and visitors.

"I think it's true that some hospitals around the city perhaps eased up on either screening or surveillance or some of the precautions," said Dr Andrew Simor, chief of microbiology at Toronto's Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre.

The latest outbreak started with a 96-year-old man who died on May 1. Doctors never suspected Sars, but now they think he had the disease and spread it to other people, one of whom may have infected staff at a rehabilitation hospital.

Simor said the first patient's case was "very difficult to recognise".

Twenty-seven people have died from Sars in the Toronto area, the only place outside Asia where the virus has killed people.

Medical officials said that Ontario, Canada's most populous province, had 12 active probable cases of Sars, one more than on Tuesday.

They said the number of people in home quarantine climbed to 3442 from about 2200 on Tuesday.

"There's no evidence to date of community transmission," said Dr Colin D'Cunha, Ontario's chief officer of medical health.

But he warned that further cases could arise in the next several days among people who were exposed before control measures were put in place.

There have been 145 probable and 144 suspected Sars cases in Ontario since the virus hit the province in mid-March.

Of those, 229 have recovered from the disease.

The outbreak means masked and gloved staff at all hospitals around Toronto check all visitors for symptoms of respiratory illness before they enter.

D'Cunha earlier said that patients with symptoms of respiratory illness would be monitored regardless of whether they were in an infection unit or another ward.

"The expectation is that if you are dealing with a respiratory patient, you should practise infection control," he said. "That's the new normal."

Tough measures

* Authorities have raided wildlife markets and ports of entry in China's Guangdong province, seizing thousands of animals.

* More than 10,000 wild animals have been seized over the past two days at Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou alone.

* Chinese research indicates the disease originated in wild animals.

- REUTERS