30-Yr.-Old Toronto Man Is City’s First Swine Flu Case, As Concerns Rise About Containment
Posted April 30, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was only a matter of time and that time finally came on Thursday as Toronto learned of its first confirmed swine flu patient.
The 30-year-old man had recently returned from Mexico and the infection, like all the others so far in Canada, is said to be mild. He’s recovering at home and is expected to be fine.
It’s the tenth new case announced in the country on Thursday. Earlier in the day, officials at opposite ends of Canada confirmed even more.
Four of the newly afflicted are in Nova Scotia, part of an original cluster detected at a boarding school in the city of Windsor.
A quartet of cases in Alberta involve young adults who had recently returned from a trip to Mexico.
And now a Montreal resident who recently visited that country has come down with symptoms, tallying that province’s first case.
Five more patients have also surfaced in B.C. One of them has led to the closure of an entire school. Classes have been cancelled for at least a week at Beairsto Elementary in Vernon, B.C., after one of its French immersion students tested positive for the virus.
They join the eight known cases in Ontario, all in the GTA – including York, Peel and Durham.
Does the spreading risk mean that officials here plan to check manifests of flights to the stricken nation and follow up with those who were on those trips?
“We haven’t had the evidence of the epidemiology support for that to say it’s causing severe enough consequences yet that we would have to do that kind of step,” responds Ontario’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams.
Port Perry resident Justine Stevenson is recovering from the disease, picked up while she and two friends were in Cancun one week ago.
“I feel short of breath and tired – that’s about it. It’s really not that bad,” she revealed.
One disturbing aspect of her case is the revelation that she and her fellow travellers were not immediately diagnosed and were allowed to go back out in public, potentially spreading the ailment to others.
It’s an especially galling situation for Barb Stevenson, Justine’s mother. She runs a day care out of her home and worries about the possible exposure to her young charges, their siblings and their parents.
She and her friends went to the hospital on the weekend but weren’t told to stay home until Monday. And Justine wasn’t informed she should wear a mask until the day after that.
“I was just mad that it got left so long before we found out that they actually had it,” her mom fumes.
One mother has already pulled her child out of Stevenson’s daycare, fearing exposure.
But it doesn’t stop there – the friends all went out to the Blue Heron Casino last weekend, potentially exposing hundreds or even thousands of others to the disease.
