SARS has killed two more people in Toronto and concern about the deadly virus shut down a Toronto-area high school on Wednesday, sending staff and students into quarantine and raising fears it may have spread from hospitals to the broader community.
Health officials in Toronto, however, said they had not found evidence of a spread into the broader community but warned that they expect to see a rise in the number of cases and deaths in coming days.
PHOTO: AFP
The Toronto area is the only place outside Asia where people have died of SARS. There have been 29 deaths to date and there are currently 12 probable and 20 suspect cases.
Doctors said seven patients are in critical condition and about 50 others are being monitored for possible infection.
More than 5,000 people, including 2,000 from the high school, are now in quarantine in the Toronto area after SARS resurfaced six days ago.
Before then, Toronto had thought it had beaten the disease -- no new cases were reported from mid-April to mid-May.
Health officials said a student at the school in Markham, just north of Toronto, appeared to have symptoms of SARS, and that prompted the quarantine call. One of the student's parents worked at Toronto's North York General Hospital, regarded as the center of the latest outbreak.
"The risk of getting SARS in this kind of setting (a school) is very low," said Dr. Murray McQuigge, a consulting physician in the region where the school is located. "We are not aware of any other student in this school who is symptomatic right now."
Doctors think that the latest outbreak erupted after health authorities eased stringent hospital rules on wearing masks and gloves after the initial outbreak appeared to have passed.
Nurses said this week they had noticed patients with SARS-like symptoms after the rules were relaxed, but doctors and hospital administrators did not listen when they reported the news.
"Unfortunately, they were not taken seriously," Doris Grinspun, executive director of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario said, describing it as "ridiculous" that no one paid attention.
The World Health Organization this week put Toronto back on its list of SARS-affected areas after being off the list for 12 days. But the UN agency stopped short of recommending that travelers avoid Toronto.
Federal Health Minister Anne McLellan advised that there "is absolutely no reason not to visit Toronto, to eat in the restaurants and go to shows and lead life in a normal way."
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and