Police spokesman Marc Depatie told CTV television that seven passengers who boarded the VIA Rail train in the Rocky Mountain resort of Jasper, Alberta, had fallen ill, and one, a 60-year-old woman, had died. Another passenger had been airlifted to hospital.

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"One person has been determined to be deceased. We are awaiting Hazmat (hazardous materials) officials...to attend the scene and board the train to determine the exact cause of what has transpired," he said.

Seven people infected
"Seven persons are displaying symptoms of either flu or flu-like conditions. Beyond that, no other person on the train that we're aware of is experiencing any medical discomfort."

Officials said the Toronto-bound train was being held in quarantine in the small northern Ontario community of Foleyet, and nobody except emergency personnel was allowed aboard.

Scene is contained
"At present we are also actively involved in containing the scene so that there is no further threat to public safety, and that's why our officers have been deployed the way they have been," Depatie told CP-24 television.

VIA-Rail's trans-Canada rail services are popular with tourists, many of whom board the train in Vancouver, British Columbia, or Jasper, for its spectacular journey through the Rockies.

Officials said they did not know the cause of the illness, but microbiologist Donald Low at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital told CTV he suspected influenza.

Acute influenza outbreak
"This really points to something like influenza... Obviously this is a pretty acute event, a number of individuals sick with respiratory illness," said Low, who played a key role containing Toronto's 2003 epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome.

"We're not talking SARS, we're not talking avian influenza... We see this happen on cruise ships and other settings when you have people together in close confines."

Toronto and Asia were the epicentres for the outbreak of SARS, a virulent atypical pneumonia that had high fatality rates, especially among health care workers. – (Frank Pingue and David Ljunggren/Reuters Health)

Read more:
A new killer-flu pandemic?
Bird flu risk increasing

May 2008
 

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