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Toronto vigilant as SARS stabilizes

A hospital visitor in Toronto uses her jacket as a face mask at the SARS screening station in front of the entrance of Toronto General Hospital. Like people in Taiwan, Toronto residents are growing weary of the disease, after a possible third outbreak east of the city. There are currently 73 active SARS cases in the city, the largest number outside Asia. PHOTO: AFP

Medical officials expressed cautious optimism on Thursday that the SARS outbreak in Toronto was waning, but fears lingered that it might reappear and doctors remained vigilant.

Physicians said that they were seeing encouraging signs among patients in clinics and retirement home residents, who have displayed SARS-like respiratory symptoms but have not contracted the disease.

"Things are quite stable," said Dr. Donald Atkinson, chief of staff at Lakebridge Health hospital in suburban Durham region, just east of Toronto.

That assessment came after doctors identified a possible new cluster of 15 SARS cases earlier this week in a Durham clinic.

Seven of the patients turned out not to have SARS, but another seven are still under investigation. One patient's death is being probed for what caused it.

Dr. Donald Low, chief of microbiology at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said if doctors are still mulling whether the seven patients have severe acute respiratory syndrome, then most likely they do not. With SARS "you're not still scratching your head a week later," he said. "SARS becomes very obvious very quickly."

Ontario's health ministry said on Thursday the number of probable SARS cases in and around Toronto had fallen to 60 from 65 a day ago. Seventeen people were in critical condition, down from 22 last Sunday.

In Durham, 539 people were in quarantine, including more than 200 residents and staff at two long-term care facilities, where some people have shown respiratory symptoms.

"We are closely monitoring those individuals who develop respiratory symptoms to determine any potential linkages," said Dr. Donna Reynolds, Durham's associate medical officer of health. There are no probable SARS cases in the region.

Toronto business people said that alarm about the outbreak will hamper an economic recovery as tourists stay away this summer. "We need a period now when there are no SARS stories and we have an all clear," said Rod Seiling, president of the Greater Toronto Hotel Association.

Seiling said Toronto hotels have lost C$50 million (US$37.2 million) a month since April, when the outbreak was at its peak and the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a week-long advisory against travel to Canada's biggest city. The advisory was lifted April 29.

The disease has killed 33 people in the Toronto area, the only place outside of Asia where the virus has claimed lives.

In late May, when officials thought Toronto's battle with SARS was nearly over as no new cases had been reported in more than a month, but the virus resurfaced.

The WHO says the virus kills about 15 percent of the people it infects.

"There is a lot we do not know because it is a new disease, just months old, and the number of cases is so small it is hard to build a broad epidemiological picture," said Dr. Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
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