The World Health Organisation said today it was lifting its warning against unnecessary travel to Toronto less than a week after it was imposed amid fears over the spread of the SARS virus.
The about-turn, taking effect tomorrow, was announced by WHO Director-General Ms Gro Harlem Brundtland after talks with Canadian officials, including the health minister of Ontario, the province where Toronto is located, who had travelled to Geneva to lobby the UN health agency.
"We will be lifting the travel advice for Toronto, Canada, effective on Wednesday," she said.
But other advisories -- affecting Hong Kong, Beijing and two major regions of China where the flu-like virus is believed to have originated -- "remain the same," Ms Brundtland declared.
Canada is the only country outside China and southeast Asia where people have died from the respiratory disease, which has killed at least 331 people around the globe.
A total of 21 of these deaths were in the Toronto area. The original WHO decision a week ago brought a storm of protest from Canada, which saw it hitting hard at its economy and especially that of Toronto, its financial capital, with officials talking of hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from tourism and other business.
Ms Brundtland denied that the world health body had succumbed to political pressure from the Canadians and said the decision to remove the alert followed improvements in the SARS situation there.
Although there were new cases of infection amongst hospital workers, there had been no recent reports of the disease spreading out into the general community, nor had there been further confirmed incidents of export to other countries.
Canada says that 20 days - roughly twice the incubation period - have now elapsed since the last known case outside a medical centre, which is the general rule of thumb for deciding whether a disease outbreak is being contained.