- TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto
doctors said on Friday they have established links between two SARS (news
- web sites) clusters, which could help ease the World Health Organization
(news - web sites)'s concerns about how they have contained the deadly
disease.
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- Health officials said they have likely unraveled how
the SARS virus infected a 96-year-old who died on May 1 and is thought
to have caused Toronto's second outbreak in late May. The man fell ill
after hip surgery, but his symptoms went undetected for weeks.
-
- How he caught SARS "is a jigsaw puzzle and we don't
yet have all the pieces," Dr. Barbara Yaffe, associate medical officer
of health for Toronto, told a news conference.
-
- Yaffe said the elderly man caught severe acute respiratory
syndrome from a nurse on his floor at North York General Hospital. The
nurse had contracted SARS from her mother, who had been at suburban Scarborough
Grace Hospital, where the city's first outbreak surfaced in March after
the virus was brought in from Hong Kong.
-
- Finding the links between the two affected hospitals
is a crucial part of the investigation as the city battles the virus, which
has killed 33 people in and around Toronto in three months. Toronto is
the only place outside Asia where SARS has claimed lives.
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- TRAVEL WARNING NOT RENEWED
-
- The WHO on Thursday downgraded Toronto on its list of
areas of local transmission after a U.S. visitor caught the virus in Canada's
largest city and developed SARS when he returned to North Carolina.
-
- But the WHO stopped short of renewing a recommendation
that travelers avoid Toronto.
-
- Dr. Paul Gully, executive director of Health Canada,
told the news conference that the WHO wants to feel "confident"
in Canada's ability to trace cases to prevent exportation of the disease.
-
- Medical officials said eight people out of a group of
15 possible cases found this week at a dialysis clinic in a Toronto suburb
did not have SARS. Six of the 15 are being monitored and another patient
who died is also being investigated.
-
- There were 55 probable SARS cases in and around Toronto
as of Friday, down from 60 on Thursday, Ontario's Health Ministry said.
Nineteen people are in critical condition.
-
- Worldwide, the disease has killed about 780 people and
infected more than 8,400. The virus surfaced in China late last year and
has spread to about 30 countries through travelers.
-
- Toronto health officials did not comment on media reports
that an Australian teenager may have caught SARS while visiting the city,
or that the disease may have spread to North Bay, a city 340 kilometers
(210 miles) north of Toronto.
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