Canada Rejects WHO Travel Warning, Death Toll at 16
Wed Apr 23, 5:56 PM ET
By Amran Abocar
TORONTO (Reuters) - Shunned by travelers and banned from a cruise line, residents of Canada's financial capital were feeling like pariahs on Wednesday after an international health group told people to stay away.
Officials from Toronto and from the federal government in Ottawa angrily rejected a warning from the World Health Organization (news - web sites) that travelers avoid Toronto, an epicenter of a deadly flu-like virus known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and told the WHO it should "get its facts straight."
"The only way to prevent export is to prevent air travel," said Dr. Paul Gully, senior director general of Health Canada, the federal health ministry. "We challenge the WHO's assertion that Toronto is an unsafe place to visit.
But even as the officials spoke, Toronto admitted that a 78-year-old woman had died of the disease on Wednesday, bringing Canada's death toll to 16.
Canada is the only country outside Asia where people have died from SARS (news - web sites), which started in China's Guangdong province and spread from there.
Nationwide, there were 330 probable or suspect cases as of Wednesday. SARS has killed more than 250 people around the world and infected nearly 4,500 in more than 20 countries.
Issuing its warning, the WHO said Toronto has exported SARS cases and infected five people in a country it did not name. It also warned against traveling to Beijing and China's Shanxi province to help curb the spread of SARS.
Canadian health officials said the flu-like virus is not being casually transmitted in Canada and all known cases can be directly traced back to an original cluster, including two people who traveled to the Philippines and Pennsylvania.
"That's an exporter of sorts but not an exporter that should put us on a travel advisory," said Dr. James Young, Ontario's commissioner for public safety.
A spokeswoman for federal Health Minister Anne McLellan, said McLellan would travel to Toronto on Monday to discuss SARS with local officials.
"Based on the firsthand knowledge that we have of the situation in Toronto, we continue to be of the opinion that it is appropriate to travel to Toronto," Farah Mohamed said.
Ottawa will host an international meeting on SARS toward the end of next week which the WHO is helping to organize.
TAKING AN ECONOMIC TOLL
The unwelcome attention is taking an economic toll on Toronto, where conventions have been canceled and hotel occupancy rates have slumped to 10 or 20 percent -- levels not seen since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"Where did this group come from? Who did they see? Who did they talk to?" a visibly angry Mel Lastman, Toronto's outspoken mayor, asked at a press conference, referring to the WHO. "They sit somewhere, I understand Geneva, I don't even know where the hell they came from, and they make decisions.
"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."
A number of companies and countries around the world have discouraged travel to Toronto, Canada's largest city, and a cruise line said it would not accept passengers from here.
"Shunned in Canada and the U.S. alike, Torontonians increasingly feel like lepers," read one headline in the Globe and Mail newspaper.
The outbreak has weighed heavily on Toronto's airline, hotel, restaurant and convention industries.
Business activity in the Toronto area accounts for about a fifth of Canada's economic output and tourism is the second largest industry in the city.
The Bank of Canada said on Wednesday the possible spread of SARS will dampen growth this quarter but offered no estimates.
One economist said the biggest risk to the economy lay in whether concern about SARS prevents people from spending money or weighs on consumer confidence.
"You need an epidemiologist first then a psychologist to determine how people are going to react to SARS spreading," said Marc Levesque, senior economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.
J.P. Morgan Canada chief economist Ted Carmichael said the SARS impact could extend beyond tourism to the healthcare and retail sectors, taking a bigger bite out of the economy.
Economists say that fear poses more of a risk to the economy than the actual disease, if it keeps consumers out of stores and travelers out of the city.
Toronto residents are already wary of going to restaurants, ridership has dropped on public transit, and industry watchers say the decline in tourism has been devastating. Some hotels in Toronto are operating at 10 percent to 20 percent vacancy rates, levels not seen since the Sept. 11 attacks.