- Hospital staff working in Toronto-area SARS units will
now be double-gloved and wear full face shields as concerns grow that the
gear used so far has not been enough to protect health-care workers.
-
- Workers now wear masks covering the mouth and nose as
well as protective goggles when they enter SARS units. Under the new protocol,
they will have to wear their masks along with shields covering the entire
face.
-
- They will also be urged to take more breaks and work
shorter shifts to avoid mistakes that could lead to exposure. The hospital
rooms of SARS patients will be disinfected more frequently.
-
- "Last week at this time, I thought we wiped it out
from the hospital sector and we were just focusing our concerns on the
community," said Sheela Basrur, Toronto medical officer of health.
"This weekend, it's been almost a reverse. The community sparks have
died down somewhat and in fact we have seen a resurgence in hospitals."
-
- It was announced during the weekend that a nurse, unaware
of her SARS infection, had ridden a commuter train and a health-care professional
with symptoms of SARS attended a funeral, potentially exposing hundreds
of others.
-
- There are 66 health-care workers listed as probable or
suspect SARS cases in Ontario. That's 25 per cent of the province's 259
cases.
-
- In Hong Kong and mainland China, where the outbreak began,
the majority of cases are hospital employees.
-
- Health officials in Toronto were grilled yesterday about
whether hospital workers should know better. The officials were asked if
they were disappointed with apparent lapses in control measures at a time
when they thought transmission in hospitals was under control.
-
- But Colin D'Cunha, Ontario's chief medical officer of
health, would say only, "They're human beings."
-
- Hospital workers will begin following the new protocol
today, said James Young, Ontario's public security commissioner. He did
not provide further description of the new facial shields.
-
- As the fight against SARS hits new setbacks, a bit of
good news emerged yesterday.
-
- No one else has been exposed to SARS in the Toronto condominium
building since people in the building with no known links to each other
came down with the disease.
-
- At Toronto's Metro Hall, where 100 city workers were
quarantined because colleagues connected to a religious group were being
monitored with SARS, health officials said no new cases have come to light.
-
- And three schools that were temporarily closed have no
documented cases of transmission among students or staff.
-
- Health officials were reluctant to judge hospital workers
who show symptoms of the disease, but earlier in the day, Hanif Kassam,
medical officer of health in York Region, said a health-care professional
became "obnoxious, threatening and belligerent" when ordered
into quarantine.
-
- The man, who had symptoms of SARS, attended a funeral
during the weekend.
-
- "I find that highly inappropriate. He is a health-care
professional. He should take this matter very seriously," Dr. Kassam
said.
-
- On Sunday, health officials released details about the
nurse in her 30s who rode the commuter train. She had been working in the
SARS unit at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. But health officials in York
Region would not say whether the man who attended the funeral was a doctor
or a nurse, raising the question of whether this reflects different policies
or different standards.
-
- In Montreal during the weekend, police were posted outside
the home of a man after he defied a quarantine order. The man was one of
330 Montreal-area residents exposed to a Toronto man with SARS at a business
meeting.
-
- The Montreal man failed to answer his phone several times
so public-health officials checked up on him. After discovering him "roaming
around the neighbourhood," they placed him under a special 72-hour
police watch.
-
- "We're very serious about this," John Carsley,
head of infectious diseases at the Montreal Public Health Department, said
yesterday.
-
- The quarantine ends tonight. So far, none of the people
who attended the business meeting has shown SARS symptoms.
-
- In British Columbia, officials reported another suspected
SARS case yesterday, a patient who had contact with a nurse at Royal Columbia
Hospital in New Westminster who showed symptoms of the virus. Now the number
of suspected SARS cases in the province is 42.
-
- Because of concerns the illness might be spreading in
the hospital, administrators have placed the fifth floor, where the possible
transmissions took place, off limits to visitors for 12 days.
-
- However, public-health officials were cheered by the
results of the first experimental diagnostic tests for SARS to be used
on B.C. patients.
-
- While two of the probable SARS cases tested positive
for the coronavirus believed to cause the illness, three of the suspected
SARS patients tested negative. But the test is still not definitive.
-
- Meanwhile, in Toronto, the epicentre of Canada's outbreak,
elective-surgery patients are being told to wait.
-
- One man who was supposed to have heart-bypass surgery
at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre in the first week
of April has died. His surgery was postponed and he died a week or so later.
"This was a preventable death," the doctor said.
-
- Dr. Young said the coroner's office is investigating
the death.
-
- Yesterday, health officials sprang to the defence of
the nurse who rode the commuter train.
-
- Donald Low, chief microbiologist at Mount Sinai, is concerned
that people might think she ignored her condition. "She had a headache,"
Dr. Low said. "If everybody with a headache didn't go to work, this
city would be brought to its knees."
-
- When the nurse arrived at the hospital last Tuesday,
however, she had a temperature of 38, and was sent to emergency.
-
- Dr. Low said there had been no clear breach of infection-control
protocols.
-
- Dr. Basrur said officials are looking for two separate
groups of six people each who sat in the GO Train compartment with the
nurse. One has come forward. The officials are not too concerned about
the people on the Toronto subway she took to work.
-
- The GO Train trip was much longer, while on the subway,
people are constantly moving in and out, Dr. Basrur noted.
-
- With reports from Carolyn Abraham, Ingrid Peritz, Rod
Mickleburgh and CTV's Avis Favaro
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