I just received a letter from the Ontario Conference President asking all of our churches to pray for our members who are caught up in the second round of SARS to hit Toronto.

Ground Zero for the latest outbreak is North York General Hospital. As some of you know, Branson Hospital (once owned by Adventists) merged with NYGH a couple of years ago. Many Adventist workers from Branson now work at General. From what the President said, some Adventist members are affected by the disease which has no cure. He understands that they may be nurses. The latest outbreak has hit the hospitals in Toronto hard. There are over six thousand people in Toronto under quaranteen for SARS.

The President asked for special prayers in churches this Sabbath and a day of prayer and fasting the Sabbath afterwards.

Hi Pastor Andrew,

quote:

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There are over six thousand people in Toronto under quaranteen for SARS.

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Where did you get the above statistics from?

In any case, this is serious and definitely does need all our prayers.

The number is between 5,000 and 7,000. You can get the information from most media outlets. 2,000 are from one school alone. The mother of the child who went to school is a nurse at the General. Her son went to school sick for several days. Both mother and son are in "stable" condition right now, definately affected by SARS. 6,000 doesn't mean that there are that many with SARS. It means that they were in the vicinity of a known SARS case and must be under quaranteen for 10 days. A 64-year-old man who broke quaranteen last month and went to his job at Hewlett Packard died from SARS over the weekend. The death toll is 29. It severely affects those who have already weakened immune systems. That is why they are desperately trying to keep it away from places like AIDS-ravaged Africa. In a sense, SARS is like Ebola because it turns lungs (and some say intestines) into mush quite rapidly. Some who get it deteriorate quickly while others can be stablized and recover. The only problem is that scientists don't know if the recovered patients still carry the potentially dangerous virus in their body. Some suggested that it can linger for a long period in the intestines, well after folks have been sent home from the hospital. The second Toronto outbreak resulted when a 96-year-old man had an operation and hospital staff didn't realize he was infectious.

Here's the big dilemma: If several Adventist nurses have SARS, potentially recover from it and then go off to Campmeeting (or even have family members who go there) and we still don't know how SARS is passed along, should Campmeeting be cancelled. A religous group (Charismatic Philipino Catholics) went to a funeral in April for a SARS victim. That gathering caused dozens in their faith group to get ill. They took communion there, so that may have been a factor in passing on the disease. By the way, the GC President is supposed to be in the "Big Tent" on Sabbath morning along with about 8,000 attendees at Campmeeting. I'll keep you posted on whether it's cancelled or not.

Today my wife and daughter went to Toronto on a class trip. A friend who is also a trained nurse pulled out of the trip because of her concerns about SARS.

According to the latest media statistics between 7-8000 people are in voluntary quarantine, with another 8-10 in forced quarantine...
Whoever heard of going to a hospital to get sick??

LMe

I am aware that a few more have died of SARS since the time of the last couple of posts.

As we are also in the summer season and getting into the height of the tourist season, could people from Toronto travelling across Canada unknowingly spread the disease throughout Canada?

Also, is Campmeeting still on in Oshawa, Ontario? For those who may not know, Oshawa is located just outside of Toronto. Oshawa is also the location of the headquarters of both the Ontario Conference and the SDA Church in Canada Union.