Posted on 04/01/2003 5:00:04 AM PST by CathyRyan
TORONTO - About 10 people in Toronto who contracted SARS have recovered from the illness and are going home.
Doctors at Scarborough Grace Hospital, where the first Canadian case was diagnosed, say the earliest patients are improving.
Dr. David Rose said doctors have prescribed a combination of antiviral and antibiotic drugs, but some patients are improving just by getting plenty of fluids and rest.
"While some are getting medication, we don't have scientific evidence that it's helpful and many patients have recovered with just the passage of time," said Rose.
Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children revealed Monday that it's treating two probable and three suspected cases of SARS in children.
SARS has killed four people in Canada and there are 129 suspected cases across the country.
Some of the patients at Scarborough Grace have been discharged and Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital has also released three patients.
The hospital's chief microbiologist, Dr. Donald Low, said more patients are pushing to go home.
"I'd feel comfortable discharging them tomorrow if it was somebody with a normal pneumonia, but this is not somebody with a normal pneumonia," said Low.
Low said health officials were caught off guard by the speed with which SARS spread in the first days of the disease.
"We haven't experienced something like this before. We didn't react on a global scale, really, until this weekend," he said.
Hong Kong origin
SARS first came to Canada when a woman returned to Toronto from Hong Kong. Dr. Sheela Basrur, Toronto's medical officer of health, stresses that SARS isn't an exclusively Asian disease.
"It's extremely unfortunate when I hear about cases of discrimination affecting Chinese school children, for example," Basrur said.
"It's hard to be a young kid in school these days without also having to feel that you're shunned by your classmates and avoided by your teachers," she said.
But people have been staying away from Toronto's normally bustling Chinatown. Some restaurants say business is down by as much as 70 per cent.
No risk in coming to Toronto: deputy mayor Toronto officials are trying to get the word out that the city is safe, despite the cases of SARS.
"I cannot imagine what the impact must be like, for example, to the hotel and motel sector, who all of a sudden are facing mass cancellations of rooms," said Basrur.
Some companies are threatening to cancel conventions hosted in Toronto. Even the New York Yankees threatened to stay out of Toronto for the Blue Jays' home opener, before deciding to come.
"There is a concern about the economic impact. Obviously, we don't want to put people at risk. We don't think they're at risk unnecessarily by coming to Toronto," said Toronto's deputy mayor, Case Ootes.
Ootes said the World Health Organization has told people to stay away from Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, but not Toronto.
Extra precautions at Pearson Airport
The WHO has recommend that officials screen everyone departing the city's Pearson International Airport as they check in. Health Canada said the airport would grind to a halt if it followed that recommendation.
There are large signs in the airport warning people about SARS. Passengers are given information cards asking them to postpone their travel plans if they're showing symptoms of SARS or if they come into contact in the past 10 days with someone who may have the virus.
"Health Canada recognizes that these are unusual procedures, but they're necessary to prevent the spread of SARS both from Canada and into Canada," said Dr. Paul Gully of Health Canada.
The procedures, beginning Tuesday, are voluntary. Some infectious disease experts said they're worried the disease may spread if people aren't honouring the system.
They go on and on about hand washing in one breath and (basically ) telling us not to panic in the next, while reporting every case and suspected case.
and they don't tell us that 10 of our (at last count - before they changed their way of reporting it) 37 cases, had been cured and gone home!
There's something weird going on......
The second death in Toronto was a 43 year old guy, I believe. The son of the first victum.
Any way, it is a relief to know that SARS doesn't automatically equal death.
The reason I included the age of the second victum is because before I edited, I had said that the people who had died of sars were older (70's) and had another ailment as well. Except for the 43 year old guy.
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