Sars spreads racial tension as Toronto feels pariah status

[Guest guest]

Wouldn't it get passed on from money handling if the virus lives for 24 hrs?

 

Sars spreads racial tension as Toronto feels pariah status

By Marcus Warren in Toronto

(Filed: 23/04/2003)

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?

xml=/news/2003/04/23/wsars23.xml & sSheet=/news/2003/04/23/ixworld.html

 

Half a world away from where it first broke out in southern China, Sars is

sowing fear and panic in Canada's largest city and testing its much-vaunted

tradition of racial harmony.

 

The disease was taken to Toronto by a woman who shared a lift with an infected

doctor in Hong Kong. The city is now the site of the worst outbreak outside

Asia.

 

More than 10,000 people have been ordered to isolate themselves in Canada as a

whole, 316 have been diagnosed with the disease and 14, all from Toronto, have

died of the illness since it surfaced there last month.

 

An American cruise company yesterday banned passengers from the Toronto area, a

first taste for Canada of the near-pariah status already being experienced by

Hong Kong and China.

 

Local health officials met yesterday to review their legal powers to force

those who are sick to observe quarantine. In the city itself, until now a model

of multi-ethnic harmony, the large Chinese community is being cold-shouldered

and its restaurants and shopping malls are deserted.

 

Much informal boycotting of Asian businesses is by the Chinese themselves but

Canadian media still agonise over the apparent discrimination.

 

The etiquette of shaking hands, and what to do when someone sneezes or coughs

in public - especially if the culprit is Asian - has become a source of debate

in " politically correct " circles.

 

Racial tension has swept through a block of flats in a suburb favoured by

upwardly mobile immigrants where one resident has gone down with the disease

despite having no direct exposure to carriers.

 

" Our parents and our teacher told us to keep away from Chinese, " said Narges

Aziz, a nine-year-old whose parents were born in Afghanistan. " It's scary. "

 

Narges and her brother Daoud both wore surgical masks and surgical gloves to

avoid infection when opening the door to the flats in the suburb of Scarborough.

 

Masks, gloves and tubes of hand sanitiser, to be applied after contact with

strangers or surfaces such as door knobs or lift buttons, are now indispensable

props for day-to-day living in the block.

 

Asiatic residents were sanguine, though. " Since this disease has its origins in

China, people have a right to be wary of us, " said Jonathan Mah, a tenant of

Chinese descent. " Some people say this is racial profiling but it strikes me

more as prudence. "

 

The Scarborough flats outbreak has been the most alarming to date outside the

medical system. But the worst havoc inflicted by the condition is to be seen in

Toronto's hospitals.

 

Some have shut their emergency departments to contain infection and the lobbies

of those still open look like sets of disaster films, with staff in protective

gear screening and taking the temperature of the few allowed inside.

 

Anxiety within the health service deepened yesterday with a new report that the

Sars virus can survive for 24 hours independently of a carrier and appears able

to overcome defences deployed by doctors and nurses to avoid infection.

 

" This is critical, " said Dr Donald Low, head of microbiology at Sunnybrook

hospital, the centre worst affected by the disease. " We thought the precautions

we were implementing would be adequate to protect workers. But what we are

seeing is that despite those precautions they are still becoming ill. "

 

Medical staff treating Sars will now wear double gloves, double gowns and full-

face masks, one step down from the donning of full " spacesuits " . The strain is

already telling on medical staff, who are working 12-hour shifts and attending

patients dying of the disease while wrapped in their protective robes.

 

Two medical workers yesterday angrily denied endangering the public by ignoring

orders to remain in quarantine, one by commuting to Toronto by train, the other

by attending a funeral mass.

 

" How many people are willing to put themselves in harm's way and walk into a

Sars unit every day to help the sick? " asked the nurse who took the train and

is now being treated for the disease.