Sars travel alert on Toronto lifted

The World Health Organisation lifted its warning against travel to Toronto yesterday, bringing urgent relief to the city beleaguered by severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars).

The WHO said it was satisfied with measures to stop the spread of the virus. Its director general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, met a Canadian delegation that said no new cases of the pneumonia-like disease had been reported for the past 20 days, double the incubation period.

The lifting of the warning, imposed on 22 April, followed protests from Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister, who moved yesterday's cabinet meeting from Ottawa to Toronto to demonstrate that the city was safe. "The entire Canadian economy is affected," Mr Chrétien said.

The warning had been criticised by the US Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta, which declined to issue its own warning to the 62 million people who cross the border between the two countries each year.

The CDC said the warning was not justified because all cases could be traced back to one family, which had brought Sars from Hong Kong. It said people were at no greater risk in Toronto than in many other regions of the world.

Canada is the only country outside Asia where people have died of Sars, with 140 cases and 21 deaths. Most of the cases have been infected in Toronto hospitals or by family members. Mike Ryan of the WHO defended the original decision. "WHO has to take decisions for global public health in 191 member states, not just for one."