- TORONTO -- Health officials
already struggling to stop SARS from running rampant in the community are
facing a surprising new threat -- infected health-care workers mingling
with the public and putting hundreds of others at risk.
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- The public health boss for York Region, north of Toronto,
revealed Monday that the infected man who exposed hundreds of fellow mourners
to severe acute respiratory syndrome Friday and Saturday is a senior health-care
professional.
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- The man, who lives in York but works at a Toronto facility,
was "obnoxious, threatening and belligerent" to public health
workers when they served him with a court order to quarantine himself,
Dr. Hanif Kassam told reporters.
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- Kassam said the region's lawyer later threatened the
man at his hospital bedside with another order that would see police enforce
the quarantine. That option was put on hold after the man finally agreed
to isolate himself.
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- In an interview, Kassam said the man, who went to a funeral
home, church and burial site, is "pretty high up the totem pole"
at a facility where he works with SARS patients.
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- "I am still finding it a little bit difficult to
understand how a qualified health professional who knows the signs and
symptoms would ignore them and put hundreds of people at risk," Kassam
said.
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- Authorities are trying to trace everyone who came into
contact with the man along with six commuters who rode in close proximity
to an infected Mount Sinai hospital nurse. She rode rush-hour trains from
Burlington to Toronto and back last Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.
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- A weekend full of setbacks on the SARS front also saw
a new cluster of as many as 15 infected doctors, nurses and other medical
staff at Sunnybrook Hospital.
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- Dr. James Young, Ontario's commissioner of public security,
called the latest events "disappointing." While praising the
tireless work and sacrifice of health-care workers during the month-long
crisis, he urged them to scrupulously follow infection precautions at work
and, above all, isolate themselves if they show any SARS symptoms.
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- "Medical people are people first and medical people
second and that means they must abide by the same rules as well,"
he said. "It is important that medical people stay home when they're
sick."
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- At-risk staff already wearing gowns, gloves, goggles
and masks are now being ordered to double up on the gown and gloves and
to wear a visor over their goggles, changing the outer layer after each
patient.
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- Ontario officials, surprised by the ferocity of the virus,
have also called in Health Canada and the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention to do an "audit" on infection control
procedures.
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- One person has called Toronto's public health unit to
say he or she might be one of the six who sat close to the Mount Sinai
nurse, said Dr. Sheela Basrur, the city's medical officer of health.
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- It also emerged Monday that a man whose heart surgery
had been put on hold because of the SARS outbreak has died. He was scheduled
to have a coronary bypass at Sunnybrook in early April, but died a week
later, according to a hospital official. Young said a coroner is conducting
an independent investigation.
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- The Canadian death toll from SARS itself climbed to 15
because officials included a 46-year-old woman who died in the Philippines
on April 13 and may have contracted the disease in Toronto. However, Basrur
said there's doubt it was SARS that killed her.
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- © Copyright 2003 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
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- http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/starphoenix/story.asp
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