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Biotech / Medical : SARS and Avian Flu -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SBHX who wrote (324)	4/23/2003 12:38:27 PM
From: LTK007	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4232

Toronto added to list that WHO says travellers should not visit. <<Sars travel alert extended news.bbc.co.uk Schools are closing in Beijing, affecting 1.7 million pupils International travellers are being advised not to visit Toronto, Beijing and China's Shanxi province because of the danger of Sars. The World Health Organization (WHO) has added the three destinations to Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province as it tries to halt the spread of the deadly virus. The new warning came as it was announced that nine more people had died of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome on the Chinese mainland and six in Hong Kong. The official death toll worldwide now stands at 251. KNOWN DEATH TOLL China: 106 Hong Kong: 105 Singapore: 16 Canada: 15 Vietnam: 5 Thailand: 2 Malaysia: 2 Full global update Are you affected? Dr David Heymann, WHO's communicable diseases chief, said the three new areas on its advice list had "quite a high magnitude of disease and a great risk of transmission locally - outside of the usual health workers". He said the areas had also been exporting cases to other countries. The travel warning will be active for at least three weeks - double the maximum incubation period for Sars, he said. Speaking in Rome, WHO Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland said the spread of Sars was "a challenge to everyone". She said Sars was "a new virus disease, a new type, more malignant" and that "every country has to be prepared". Cluster of cases A spokesman for the Ontario provincial health ministry in Canada, John Letherby, described the WHO's inclusion of Toronto as "regrettable". "It's not something where we're seeing the effects of the magnitude of the equivalent of a China," he said. The WHO had praised the tough measures taken by Canada's business capital but has seen Sars continue to spread in the community there. Ontario health officials called WHO's inclusion of Toronto regrettable "Toronto last week had an exportation which set up a cluster of five cases in health workers in another country," Dr Heymann said. The authorities in Beijing have meanwhile announced that all the capital's schools will be closed for two weeks in an effort to halt the spread of the virus. The decision will affect more than 1.7 million children and comes as China struggles to contain an outbreak which officials first tried to play down. The nine deaths announced in mainland China on Wednesday included seven in Beijing, taking the total to 106 deaths among 2,305 cases. Shanxi is one of the worst-hit provinces in China and was among the first to report the emergence of Sars cases. Hong Kong, which has also been hit heavily by the Sars virus, has announced a HK$11.8bn ($1.5bn) economic package to lessen the impact of the outbreak. The death toll in Hong Kong stands at 105, with the total number of cases at 1,458. As well as affecting China and Hong Kong, the Sars virus has spread to many other parts of the world, with the total number of cases now put at more than 4,000. Among other developments:>>