Mystery virus in Canada revives Sars worries
ANN/ The Straits Times
A mysterious Sars-like outbreak has spread to a second nursing home in the Vancouver area, Canadian health authorities said on Wednesday, raising concerns about a new wave of the virus.The officials first revealed last week that an upper respiratory ailment, described as relatively mild, had initially infected residents and medical workers at Kinsmen Place Lodge in Surrey, Vancouver. They did not identify the second home that has been hit. In response to the Canadian cases, the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Singapore released a statement yesterday reminding all hospitals to continue maintaining precautionary measures against Sars. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has joined Canadian health officials in investigating the latest Sars-like outbreak. Eleven people have died at Kinsmen Place Lodge since the discovery that the illness had spread to 143 people there, Canadian officials said on Wednesday. The second outbreak at the unidentified nursing home appeared just as the first one was dissipating towards the end of last month, The New York Times reported. In the second nursing home, nine of about 100 of its residents have contracted a mild upper respiratory infection, but little cough and no pneumonia or fever. "If this were Sars in British Columbia, we would have expected to see severe illness causing severe pneumonia,'' said Dr Perry Kendall, the British Columbia health officer, in an interview with The Washington Post. "Instead, we are seeing a mild illness...which is why we favour the hypothesis that it is an altered or mutated virus, not the virus that caused the worldwide in the spring.'' Canadian health officials emphasised that much more laboratory work needs to be done to determine whether the virus identified in Surrey is Sars or one of a Number of others from the same coronavirus family that can cause respiratory illness. "So it is way too early to say it is the Sars virus,'' Dr Kendall said. Initial tests ruled out infectious causes such as influenza, adenovirus, Legionnaire's disease and mycoplasma. Sars killed 44 people in Toronto and 812 people worldwide after it was identified and spread early this year from China. On July 5, WHO declared the worldwide outbreak contained.
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