http://www.canada.com/national/features/sars/story.html?id=32FDD2FB-9A87-4FE9-83C4-E745E3E8C872

CDC LYING AS TO THE PEOPLE INFECTED AND DYING OF SARS IN AMERICA

article from Canada.com. let's see how long this article stays up before the heads of the CDC who are corrupt to the core.. find out..

Wednesday, June 11, 2003
CREDIT: J.P. Moczulski, The Canadian Press
 

Hospital staff walk through the parking lot at Lakeridge Health Centre yesterday. The centre has excluded three of 15 dialysis patients thought to be possible SARS cases.
 
ADVERTISEMENT

The spectre of a new WHO travel advisory loomed larger in Toronto yesterday as U.S. authorities confirmed that a North Carolina man caught SARS in the city and a hospital with a cluster of possible cases investigated two suspicious deaths.

Experts also examined evidence the American man might have contracted the virus from a symptom-free transmitter, an unsettling challenge to conventional wisdom about how SARS is spread.

Meanwhile, the Ontario government launched a commission of inquiry into the outbreak, which has killed 33 people, forced more than 20,000 into temporary quarantine and pushed up provincial health care costs by more than $720-million.

The province also raised questions about U.S. statistics that suggest that country has been much less severely affected by the global epidemic than Canada.

One of the leading experts in the SARS fight said Toronto appears to be edging closer to the point where the World Health Organization could again advise against non-essential travel to the city.

The key may be the unexplained cluster of possible cases among dialysis patients in Whitby and Oshawa, said Dr. Donald Low, chief microbiologist at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital.

"If we don't come up with a reasonable explanation as to why this occurred, they might be more worried and they might slap us with a travel advisory," he said. "I don't know if a travel advisory means anything, though, because nobody is coming to Toronto anyway."


Among the factors triggering a WHO travel advisory are a caseload of more than 60 active probable patients; an increase of at least five cases a day; export of cases to other countries; and transmission of the disease within the community. Of those criteria, Toronto is lacking the daily increase and the community transmission.

Dick Thompson, a WHO spokesman, said the UN agency is watching the developments in Canada closely. He said a travel advisory is not likely to be imposed in the next "couple of days" but added, "We're very concerned about what's going on."

There was some good news in the continuing effort to beat back the outbreak, though. Lakeridge Health Centre, with sites in Whitby and Oshawa, excluded three of 15 dialysis patients as possible SARS cases, leaving 12 who are still under investigation, said Dr. Don Atkinson, the centre's chief of staff.

Those excluded were found to have other causes for their fever, such as urinary-tract infections, he said. He said he expects more will be pulled off the list as the review continues, leaving as few as one or two potential SARS cases. The hospital raised the alarm after it saw first one, then a dozen other dialysis patients with symptoms that could be attributed to SARS.

There is no confirmation yet that any of them have the disease and no link has been found to a known source of SARS.

Dr. Atkinson said the hospital is also looking at two elderly patients who died after surgery, one with pneumonia, the other with "respiratory distress." He said there is no evidence the deaths, both of which occurred in the past few days, are from SARS. But one of the dialysis patients did spend time in Lakeridge's critical care unit at the same time as the two dead patients.

Also yesterday, Jeffrey Engel, North Carolina's state epidemiologist, said two tests on a U.S. man for SARS antibodies have come back positive. "Given his travel to Toronto and going to a health-care facility, that had to be the risk factor," he said.

Officials at Toronto's Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, a chronic-care hospital and seniors' complex, confirmed the North Carolina man visited a relative there on May 16 and 17.

The relative's roommate, and the roommate's regular visitor, may have both been exposed to SARS on the orthopedic ward of North York General Hospital, then moved to Baycrest on May 15, said Dr. Allison McGeer, a Mount Sinai infectious disease specialist who consults for Baycrest.

They were not sick when the North Carolina man visited the room, but became ill with what appears to be SARS between May 21 and 23, Dr. McGeer said.

On the one hand, she said, it seems unlikely the visitor contracted the disease in the room, because evidence from around the world suggests only people who have already developed symptoms of SARS can pass it on. But at the same time, she said, "it's such a coincidence that it seems unlikely to be a coincidence."

If an asymptomatic patient did transmit the disease, it would be a rare occurrence but would still have "tremendous implications," Dr. Low said.

Emmanuel Chabot, a Health Canada spokesman, said the department had been asked by the Ontario government to question the U.S. Centers for Disease Control on three aspects of the U.S. experience with SARS. They include the current status of the U.S. outbreak, why it has not seen any deaths, and whether there has been an unreported cluster of SARS cases in San Francisco, he said.

Tony Clement, Ontario's Health Minister, said in an interview he wanted more information after hearing a rumour from someone who recently visited San Francisco that the city's hospitals were full of SARS cases.

"This person was quite adamant that there are a lot of SARS patients in San Francisco and I feel an obligation to check it out, find out if there is any basis to this," he said.

"Clearly the numbers in the United States are quite low, given the population.

"I just want to make sure that we know everything that they're doing. If they're doing some things better than we're doing, I'd like to know."

The number of cases in the United States -- 69 probable and 319 suspect -- is "very striking," Mr. Clement said.

He stopped short of suggesting that the United States is somehow downplaying its cases, saying he has no evidence of that.

tblackwell@nationalpost.com

© Copyright 2003 National Post

theendistheendifweareallasleepandnevernoticeourdeath