Posted on 04/05/2003 4:04:29 PM PST by Lessismore
Toronto — Another person has died of SARS in the Toronto area and a second death is under investigation, Ontario's chief medical officer of health said Saturday.
An unidentified person died Saturday morning of severe acute respiratory syndrome, bringing to eight the total number of Ontario residents to succumb to the mystery virus, said Colin d'Cunha.
A ninth death — on April 1 — is considered suspicious by authorities, he said.
"We only became aware of this death this morning and we've been working on it full-tilt ever since," Dr. James Young, the province's commissioner of public security, told a news conference.
In another development, Mr. d'Cunha urged anyone who visited the Highland Funeral Home in east-end Toronto on April 3 to go into voluntary quarantine because someone with SARS attended a funeral there that day. He said officials may use the funeral home's guestbook to determine who was there that day.
Mr. d'Cunha and Dr. Young also said that the ninth death at Scarborough Centenary Hospital, if proven to be SARS-related, might mean authorities have another group of cases on their hands. The emergency room at the hospital has been closed and no admissions were being allowed.
An autopsy has done no good in determining whether the ninth person died of SARS, Dr. Young said.
"At this point we haven't found autopsies particularly useful because there is no test that can rule SARS in or out in an autopsy," he said. Instead, authorities have to track whether victims were in contact with others who have SARS.
Despite indications Friday of a break in the three-week-old crisis, officials had been wary about growing complacent in the ongoing war against a virulent illness that continues to baffle microbiologists around the world.
The disease has killed at least 85 people in Asia and Canada and sickened at least 2,200 in more than a dozen nations. Mainland China accounts for more than half the fatalities.
Hospitals outside the Toronto area are in the process of returning to normal operation, including doing elective surgeries. Public health officials are spending the weekend trying to determine when normal operations can resume at hospitals in Toronto.
To date, health authorities in Ontario have been forced to confine seven people exposed to SARS who were refusing to co-operate with voluntary quarantine orders.
It's unlikely those individuals were infectious when they were in the community at large, Mr. d'Cunha said.
In other developments Saturday:
- An international team tracking the spread of SARS in China's hard-hit Guangdong province have found a rare form of airborne chlamydia in some of their patients, raising the possibility that more than one germ may be involved. Other Chinese cases suggest the disease might be passed by touching something tainted by a sick person's mucous or saliva.
- New cases were reported in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, while Hong Kong reported three more deaths and Malaysia announced its first.
- In Hong Kong, workers in protective gear captured rats and roaches at an apartment complex where at least 250 people were infected. They also rounded up pets — eight dogs, 14 cats, two hamsters and two turtles — after a cat was found to carry a common form of virus which microbiologists believe could be linked to SARS.
- China responded Saturday to criticism of its handling of the outbreak by promising to create a disease warning system and keep its public better informed.
- In the United States, 115 suspected cases in 29 states have been reported. None have been confirmed by the CDC. Most of the suspected cases are in California and New York, although officials said they are not concentrated in one area. No one in the U.S. has died of SARS.
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