Toronto Airport to Get Fever Scanners to Fight SARS (Update1)

Toronto, April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Toronto's Pearson International Airport will install thermal scanners within three weeks to identify people with fevers that could signal they have severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The city is stepping up efforts to prevent the export of the deadly disease to other countries, answering a concern of the World Health Organization, which today lifted an advisory against non-essential travel to Toronto. The agency imposed the restriction last week after saying Canada didn't do enough to stop the spread of the illness outside its borders.

Travelers will need to fill out questionnaires about their health beginning next week, Ron St. John, director general at Health Canada's Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, told reporters outside an international conference on SARS in Toronto. The thermal scanners should be in place at Pearson, Canada's busiest airport, two weeks later, although the measures by themselves won't prevent the disease from spreading, he said.

``Stopping importation will not be possible unless there's a halt to world travel and commerce,'' St. John told the conference.

The Toronto meeting is the first large-scale international meeting on the viral disease in North America. It brought together medical experts from the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Hong Kong.

U.S. Measures

U.S. officials are studying whether permanent screening at U.S. airports for potential carriers of the virus will be effective, said Stephen Ostroff, deputy director of the National Centers for Infectious Disease Control, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

``This is an issue that everyone is looking at very carefully,'' he told reporters. ``We consider the experience here in Toronto to be very applicable to what could potentially happen almost anywhere in the United States.''

The disease has killed 21 people in the Toronto area. There is no proven treatment.

Canada's federal health department yesterday suspended routine access to the antiviral drug ribavirin, developed by ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., saying that based on laboratory tests and anecdotal evidence, there was ``no data to support the continued use'' against SARS. Makers of the drug include Ribapharm Inc., Schering-Plough Corp. and Roche Holding AG.