- (AFP) -- Officials here expect this weekend to be a crucial
test as they prepare to transfer all SARS patients to four area hospitals
next week as strapped health care workers try to handle any new SARS patients
that stream in.
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- Canada is the only country outside Asia to suffer SARS
deaths. On Friday, Canada reported its 30th victim, a 57-year-old man who
died Thursday.
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- The man was associated with one of the hospitals linked
to the latest SARS outbreak in Canada's largest city, which was discovered
last week.
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- Canadian Health Minister Ann McLellan said that, despite
a recent outbreak, her country has contained SARS.
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- "It is not getting worse," McLellan told CNN
television.
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- "This second cluster has probably peaked and we
are on the way out of this, once again."
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- As of Friday, Canada reported 43 probable SARS cases
and 15 suspect. All cases were in Ontario province, and centered around
its capital Toronto, except two suspect cases that appeared in British
Columbia province.
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- Some 150 people also were under investigation here as
possible SARS cases.
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- SARS first came to Toronto via an elderly woman who returned
from Hong Kong in late February. Before her death, she infected her family,
which in turn transmitted the disease to hospital workers, patients and
visitors in mid-March.
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- The latest group of SARS sufferers is being traced back
to a 96-year-old man, who died May 1 after mysteriously contracting the
flu-like illness in a hospital ward where no SARS patients were located.
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- Officials think a mildly infected staff or patient may
have infected him. Since his SARS diagnosis was post-mortem, his transmission
to other patients, workers and visitors went undetected for several weeks.
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- This discovery last week could not have come at a worse
time: Toronto officials were gearing up to try to woo back visitors with
a multi-million dollar promotional campaign to try to erase the stigma
from its initial outbreak.
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- Toronto was put back on the World Health Organization's
list of SARS-affected areas Monday.
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- Due to the outbreak, more than 7,000 people are in precautionary
quarantine, including 440 health care workers and 1,500 linked to a high
school now closed because one of its students -- whose mother was a health
care worker -- attended class last week.
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- "This is a nervous weekend for us because we have
two things going on at once," said Ontario's public security commissioner
James Young.
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- "We're attempting to take this hospital care system
and develop our SARS hospitals and our SARS clinics.
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- "We do that while facing the problem of continuing
to see patients and patients who need to be sorted out as to whether they
have SARS.
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- "We have, at the same time, health workers who are
sick and health care workers who are in isolation and this truly is causing
strain on the system," he explained.
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- Ontario plans to transfer all of its 55 SARS patients
(42 probable and 13 suspect), now in different hospitals, to four hospitals
next week, creating more centralized SARS care.
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- "It's a major disappointment for everyone in the
health care system that's been involved in this ... that we're back here
doing this again," Young admitted.
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- Officials said they have had to issue mandatory quarantine
orders for at least four people, including some of the teenagers associated
with the school.
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- Some were reported by local media to be breaking quarantine
and going to local malls.
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- While some health officials said Toronto's second outbreak
may have peaked, Young stressed a more cautious approach.
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- "We've indicated we're not out of the woods yet.
We've put measures in place. We're watching very carefully this weekend
and early next week will tell us how effective the first round of measures
have been.
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- "There will be problems ... the question is how
many and how big," he said, lamenting "even when you gain control,
it takes one case to start it back up again."
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- On Friday, US Centers for Disease Control officials arrived
here to help Toronto health experts get to the bottom of this second outbreak.
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- There are more than 8,200 cases of probable SARS among
some 30 countries and at least 750 SARS-linked deaths, according to the
WHO.
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