SARS threatens Canadian trip to Special Olympics

The Canadian Special Olympics team's hopes of attending next month's games were put in jeopardy last night after Toronto was added back on to an official list of SARS-affected areas.

A decision on whether the team will be allowed to attend the games is expected tomorrow when the Department of Health's SARS expert group discusses the issue.

The president of Special Olympics Canada, Mr Jim Jordan, last night asked the Government not to ban the team's 59 athletes from attending what promised to be "a trip of a lifetime".

"It would be hugely disappointing for the athletes," Mr Jordan said. "They have been training extremely hard for this over the last year. They have all been looking forward to what would be a trip of a lifetime. We haven't given up and hope the Irish Government will relent."

A spokesman for the World Health Organisation said a decision on whether to admit the team in the light of the SARS threat was a matter for the Government.

There is speculation that a compromise might be reached based on members of the delegation from outside Toronto attending, as just 10 of the team's athletes are from this area.

The chairwoman of Enniscorthy's Special Olympics host town committee, Ms Mary Whitford-Carroll, said volunteers were still hoping the team would be able to make the journey.

"We have four days of events planned and the flags are up all over the town. The volunteers and host families are all ready and we're looking forward to it," she said.

Under the expert group's guidelines, any teams from areas on the WHO's list of infected areas are automatically barred from travelling to the games. China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are also on the list.

Affected countries may be allowed attend if they are removed from the list of infected regions 10 days before the games begin. The Philippines was removed from the list last week.

Mr Jordan also expressed frustration at quarantine measures for the Special Olympics which "didn't make a lot of sense", but accepted that the Government had a right to take any precautions it deemed necessary to protect its citizens. "Often the farther away something is the more threatening it seems. Even in Toronto, people are going about their business as normal. More people are dying of pneumonia or the flu than from this," he said.

SARS resurfaced late last week in Toronto after more than a month of no new cases.

There are 291 possible and suspect SARS cases in Ontario, mostly around Toronto. Twenty-seven people who had the virus in the Toronto area have died so far, the only place outside Asia where the virus has claimed lives.

The outbreak of the flu-like illness has sent more than 800 Canadian people into quarantine.

A suspect case of the SARS virus was being treated in a male patient at Letterkenny General Hospital last night. The patient, according to the North Western Health Board (NWHB), fitted the World Health Organisation's definition of a "suspect case of SARS".

This would mean he presented with a high temperature and a cough or breathing difficulties and had had recent close contact with a person with SARS or had recently travelled to a SARS-affected area.