BEIJING/TORONTO, April 24: China sealed off a major Beijing hospital on Thursday to quarantine SARS-affected areas, and angry Canadian officials rejected the World Health Organization’s warning to travellers to stay away from Toronto, now one of the epicentres of the virus.
Toronto officials, worried about the toll on city businesses, huddled in emergency session to devise strategies to cope with the fallout from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has killed 16 people in the area.
Although Canada is the only country outside Asia where people have died from SARS, Canadian officials said the WHO warning was unjustified and told the agency to “get its facts straight”.
Hours after the WHO advised people against going to Beijing, Chinese police took positions around the 1,200-bed People’s Hospital to stop people going in or out. The WHO has also warned against travel to Hong Kong and China’s Guangdong and Shanxi provinces.
“No one is allowed to enter or leave,” a member of the 2,300-strong staff said. “There are policemen and security guards standing outside.”
The hospital is not one of those set aside to treat SARS patients, but it has at least 60 confirmed or suspected cases among nurses and doctors.
It was the latest dramatic action by a government that declared war on SARS last week, five months after the virus first appeared in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong and led to 4,600 infections worldwide.
A respiratory infection caused by a relative of a common cold virus, SARS has no cure. It is spread by droplets from sneezing and coughing, but may also be transmitted by touching objects such as elevator buttons. It has a mortality rate near six per cent.
There have been 330 probable or suspect cases of SARS in Canada, of which most were in Toronto, which has a large ethnic Chinese population.
The outbreak has also sent thousands into quarantine and is taking a heavy toll on business in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, which accounts for about a fifth of Canada’s economic output. Concerns about SARS are also weighing on the Canadian dollar, with investors fretting about the economic impact of the disease.
“Let me be clear. If it’s safe to live in Toronto, it’s safe to come to Toronto. I dare them to be here tomorrow,” said Mayor Mel Lastman, referring to the WHO.
But it was clear the economic damage had been done.
“Whether the people in Canada see it as much of a threat, the fact of the matter is it’s really discouraging anybody from outside Canada to even venture into Canada because of it,” said David Ebata, managing analyst at economic research firm Thomson IFR in Boston.
China, which came in for severe criticism last week for not revealing the extent of the disease at first, took the WHO warning in its stride. —Reuters
