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Health officials are investigating whether they have a new cluster of SARS deaths after four people died last week at the Rouge Valley Health System's Centenary facility. "The autopsies have or are in the process of being completed ... We don't know if they are SARS-related," said Dr. Colin D'Cunha, Ontario's commissioner of public health. "We aren't out of the woods yet. We can't start to breathe easy until the early part of next week." The four deaths haven't been added to Canada's SARS death toll, which remains at 30. "There is no indication of spread to other patients or...

Toronto — Just two weeks ago, Toronto health officials were so convinced they had beaten SARS into submission that they dismantled key elements of their containment team while lead members took off on international tours to describe how the city defeated the disease. Ontario commissioner of public security James Young, Toronto associate medical officer of health Bonnie Henry and two other medical experts flew to the SARS-embattled regions of Hong Kong, Beijing and Taipei to share the Toronto experience. Mount Sinai Hospital's chief microbiologist, Donald Low, jetted off to give weekend lectures in Glasgow, New York and Washington, as Andrew...

TORONTO (CP) -- Ontario officials have bit the bullet and admitted that eight cases in a suspected and disturbing new outbreak of SARS must be classified as probable SARS patients, even though they cannot say how the first patient in the new outbreak contracted the disease. In addition, a group of 26 people have been added to the list of suspect SARS cases and "at least eight" others are under investigation as possibly suffering from the disease. This new chain of transmission, which began in North York General Hospital and has since forced ward closures in five other city hospitals,...

ONG KONG, May 23 — The World Health Organization today lifted its advisory against travel to Hong Kong and neighboring Guangdong Province in southern China, once the twin epicenters in a global outbreak of SARS, saying that the respiratory disease was being contained in both places. The W.H.O.'s decision is the clearest sign yet that SARS is not spreading nearly as fast as once feared, although American officials have warned that it might show a resurgence next winter, the season when many other respiratory diseases are particularly prevalent. The number of new cases reported daily in China has plunged in...

HONGKONG health officials said on Saturday they have adjusted their treatment of Sars as they revealed that 10 per cent of patients thought to have recovered from the virus could suffer lasting damage to their lungs. The government's decision to adjust the treatment protocol came as the city recorded two more deaths and seven new Sars cases, bringing the territory's death toll to 212 from 1,674 infections. Director of Health, Dr Yeoh Eng Kiong, said that the decision to adjust the treatment for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) had been taken after studies from the Hong Kong University and Chinese...

An excessive immune reaction appears to be the fatal factor in patients who die of SARS, according to medical data from Hong Kong. The best estimate of the fatality rate of SARS is rising steadily and so understanding how the disease causes death is critical to finding the best treatments. Scientists have also discovered that the SARS virus can remain viable for at least 24 hours after being deposited in a droplet on a plastic surface - a simulation, for example, of an infected person coughing on to the wall of a lift. The new information was revealed by Klaus...

The World Health Organization announced Wednesday that scientists have confirmed the identity of the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, which has killed more than 150 people around the world and sickened thousands of others. Scientists in the Netherlands infected monkeys with the coronavirus, which was suspected of causing SARS. They found the animals developed the same symptoms of the disease that humans do. Scientists had been almost certain that a new form of the coronavirus was the cause of SARS. But they couldn't say for sure until more experiments were done. Dr. David Heymann, executive director of the...

Where does the virus come from? This anecdote, reported by the Journal Ming Bao on march 29 is interesting: "WHO pointed out in earlier days that SARS was originally detected in FoShan and HeYuan county, Guangdong Province. A medicial professor in RenMin hospital of HeYuan county named Xie JinKui does not agree with that assumption. Prof. Xie said that the first case in HeYuan was detected on 17th of Dec, last year (2002). The patient is a 35 year old man. He is a cook in ShenZhen, working in a restaurant where he has close contact with wild animals, such...

TORONTO (CP) -- The city's SARS outbreak took a distressing turn Friday with news that a medical resident was likely coming down with SARS when he was present for the delivery of a set of twins at a downtown hospital during a full day's work earlier this week. The health-care worker was believed to be infected May 23 at North York General Hospital and didn't show with symptoms until two days past the 10-day incubation period, said Dr. Donald Low, a key member of the city's SARS containment team. He was showing no symptoms when he assisted in the delivery...

<p>Fifteen or 20 years to create a new vaccine is considered quite speedy. So the federal government's blueprint for a shot to stop the SARS epidemic in a mere three years seems positively head-snapping.</p> <p>Can it be done?</p> <p>Certainly, says Dr. Gary Nabel, chief of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "If everything went perfectly," he qualifies. "If all the stars were aligned."</p>

A SARS vaccine in three years? Glacial pace of vaccine development hits overdrive By DANIEL Q. HANEY (AP) - Fifteen or 20 years to create a new vaccine is considered quite speedy. So the U.S. government's blueprint for a shot to stop the SARS epidemic in a mere three years seems positively head-snapping. Can it be done? Certainly, says Dr. Gary Nabel, chief of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "If everything went perfectly," he qualifies. "If all the stars were aligned." The stars almost never align precisely in medical research. But if...

When the first human retroviruses, including HIV, were discovered in the '70s and '80s, decades of research on animal retroviruses allowed researchers and clinicians to rapidly develop diagnostics, treatments, and preventative measures for the emerging human diseases. History is repeating itself as the world public health community draws on decades of research on animal coronaviruses to help them understand and battle the emergent human coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).On March 12, 2003, the World Health Organization issued a global alert for cases of atypical pneumonia in response to reports of an unidentified severe respiratory illness spreading in China and...

A plague on our planet... for ever (Filed: 07/05/2003) The Sars epidemic is just the first of many health scares waiting for us in a highly mobile, densely populated 21st century, say scientists. It is vital that we learn all we can about managing such outbreaks as well as fighting them with technology. Roger Highfield reports Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is only the beginning. We are set to see many more epidemics sweep across the planet in the coming decades, turning the 21st century into the era of the quarantine and face mask. At risk: one reason deadly pathogens will...

Cats can get Sars 15/05/2003 18:42  - (SA)     Geneva - Some cats may become temporarily infected with the Sars virus but do not appear to be able to transmit the disease, according to research in Hong Kong, a top World Health Organisation (WHO) official said on Thursday. David Heymann, head of WHO's communicable diseases unit, also told journalists that officials in China were preparing research to find out how the pneumonia-like disease might have jumped the species barrier between animals and humans. Heymann told journalists that the only studies on domestic pets like cats and dogs that he knew of had...