UPDATE
Seems they are just looking for people with FLU symptoms.
(fair use snip)
Flu victims asked to wear masks in ERs, MDs' offices
AARON DERFEL
Gazette Health Reporter
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
ADVERTISEMENT
Montreal public health authorities took the extraordinary step yesterday of urging anyone with flu symptoms who shows up in an emergency room or doctor's office to don a surgical mask.
The measure is aimed not only at containing the spread of influenza as it reaches its peak in Montreal in the next three weeks. The Public Health Department is also being very prudent to prevent even the remote possibility of SARS hitting the city, or the transmission of a new human virus that might originate from Asia's bird-flu epidemic.
ER doctors and nurses are being advised once again to ask anyone with a fever or a nagging cough whether they have recently travelled from southeast Asia, the source of last year's outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Get used to it: the surgical-mask measure is part of the new cultural phenomenon of "respiratory etiquette," officials said yesterday. That includes repeated hand washing with an antiseptic gel like Purell for those with flu-like symptoms.
"More and more, this is going to become the norm," said Dr. Richard Lessard, director of the Public Health Department.
"People who cough and who have fever will be offered a mask and will be asked to clean their hands and, if at all possible, to stay away from the rest of the patients in the waiting room."
These measures have already been adopted by Montreal hospitals and CLSC clinics, and are mandatory. In private doctors' offices, however, they are voluntary - for now, because there is no sign of an epidemic.
"We're becoming more aware that viruses change around the world," Lessard said. "The SARS epidemic of last year that touched Toronto so much increased our awareness that the preparation that we have toward these epidemics is not what it should be."
http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/story.asp?id=FDD4F179-C39A-49D2-A6FF-090F8B6ABB35
As far as the person who posted the PROPAGANDA SITE here is a good example of that.
"There's a lot of paranoid Thais," he said. "My brother's girlfriend is Thai and she won't go near chicken. She told me the disease came out of the United States."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3546243&thesection=news&thesubsection=general