Toronto Health Officials Identify Mystery Illness

TORONTO — Toronto health officials say they have identified the illness that has killed 16 elderly people as being Legionnaire’s disease.

There are no new deaths and it has been contained, said David McKeown, medical officer of health for Toronto.

Legionnaires’ disease is a type of pneumonia named after a severe outbreak that affected a meeting of the American Legion in Philadelphia in 1976.

At a briefing that included mayor David Miller, Dr. Donald Low, medical director of Ontario’s Public Health Laboratories and chief microbiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, said although there are no new deaths "some people are fragile enough that they may still succumb to this."

Health experts, including the World Health Organization, earlier insisted the illness is winding down and emphasized it has been contained to the Seven Oaks Home for the Aged in the eastern suburbs of Toronto.

Their inability to at first identify it spooked the elderly and cast a shadow over a city still trying to shed bad publicity from the SARS epidemic.

Provincial and city officials are concerned over the growing international media coverage of the mystery bug, worried tourists will flock from Canada’s largest city, as they did during the SARS outbreak in the spring of 2003.