Toronto investigates 33 suspected cases of SARS

TORONTO - Hospital workers in Toronto once again strapped on stuffy masks and gowns Saturday to confront a new possible SARS outbreak that officials said involved 33 suspected cases, weeks after Canada proclaimed itself free of the deadly virus.

The new cluster of possible cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome prompted U.S. health officials to issue a new travel alert for Canada's largest city.

The World Health Organization confirmed one new positive case but said more confirmation of an outbreak was needed before considering such a travel warning.

In Toronto, health officials ordered restricted access and use of protective masks and gowns for area hospital emergency rooms, repeating steps taken earlier against the largest SARS outbreak outside of Asia.

At least 500 people possibly exposed were told to quarantine themselves at home for 10 days, they said.

Dr. Colin D'Cunha, the Ontario commissioner of public health, said 33 people with respiratory illness were being tested for SARS. All were believed to have contracted the illness in hospitals over the past month, he said.

Two suspected cases involved elderly patients who died in recent weeks. If confirmed, they would raise the SARS death toll in the Toronto area to 26.

A formal definition of a probable SARS case requires a link to a known SARS case, and that has yet to be established, D'Cunha said. But officials were proceeding as if all the possible new cases were SARS.

"Clinically, we think they have it," said Dr. Donald Low, a microbiologist at the forefront of Toronto's anti-SARS efforts.

Despite the inability to trace the new suspected cases to known cases, officials said there was no danger of an uncontrolled outbreak.

"This is not a disease out there in the general community," D'Cunha said.

The reports came on a day of rare good news out of Asia, where SARS originated.

For the first time since late March, no new cases were reported in Hong Kong on Saturday. Taiwan had no new deaths for a second day in a row and Chinese officials said they saw a "notable downward trend."

SARS has spread to more than 8,000 people around the globe and killed nearly 700, the vast majority of them in Asia. Canada earlier saw about 150 cases and 24 deaths.

Ontario and Toronto health officials said Friday an apparently undiagnosed SARS case at North York General Hospital might have infected health care workers, patients and their family members in a ward in late April.

A patient transferred from the ward to St. John's Rehabilitation Hospital was considered the likely source of four cases under investigation, they said. It was not known where the new cases might have come from.

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