Sections of another hospital, St. Michael's, were closed Saturday following the discovery of a probable case of the disease at one of the city's geriatrics centers from where a patient had been transferred, The Toronto Star reported Sunday.
The newspaper quoted Dr. Donald Low, a leading expert, saying, "This is still an institutional outbreak" with new cases confined to health care workers and their close family members.
But the World Health Organization is assumed to be under pressure to reinstate a travel warning because of the Toronto outbreak, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did Friday afternoon.
A travel warning is not the most severe level of sanction available, and advises travelers to take precautions when traveling to Canada rather than warning them to stay away.
Public health officials in Canada are investigating 33 suspected SARS cases, seven of them health care workers. Twenty-five of them are hospitalized, the Star reported. Eight others are staying at home while recovering. Six others are recovering from previous infections.
The neurosurgery and neurotrauma sections of St. Michael's Hospital are among the busiest in the city, making the decision to close them Saturday difficult, officials said.
Seventy of the hospital's workers, including several doctors and nurses, were placed in quarantine. One patient suspected to have SARS had been transferred to St. Michael's from St. John's Rehabilitation Hospital where five cases of SARS were confirmed last week.
The World Health Organization is expected to take up the case of Canada early this week. The most important facts WHO will be interested in, officials said, were whether all of the latest SARS infections were contracted in hospitals or whether any were secondary infections that happened in the community at large.
A WHO spokesman told the Star that the worldwide monitoring agency was still in the process of gathering information.
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