Canadian Doctors Try to Identify Mystery Illness

TORONTO —  A Congolese woman who arrived in Canada with a mystery illness slipped into critical condition Friday while doctors raced to figure out what was ailing her and whether five people who came into close contact with her were also in danger.

Canadian health officials announced that 32-year-old Colette Matshimoseka, who arrived in Canada on Saturday from the Democratic Republic of Congo, does not have any type of hemorrhagic fever, a class of transmissible viruses that can cause victims to bleed to death. She was earlier feared to have Ebola or a related disease.

But the physicians were still waiting for test results to determine the exact cause of her illness. Blood samples had been sent to Canada’s highest-level testing center in Winnipeg and to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Lab technicians were working as fast as they could, said Dr. Mark Loeb, an infectious-disease specialist at Henderson General Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, where Matshimoseka was on life support.

“What we’ve ruled out are the worst possible types of infection you can catch,” he said at a news conference Friday. “It may be an infectious disease. It may be something else. The key message . . . is that the public is not at risk.”

He said doctors had ruled out Ebola, Lassa, Marburg, Crimean-Congo and yellow fever, all types of hemorrhagic fevers. As a result, they had downgraded precautions for health workers caring for her, allowing them to stop wearing spacesuit-like protective outfits. Public health officials also had notified Matshimoseka’s fellow passengers on her journey from Congo through Newark, N.J., to the city of Hamilton near Toronto that they were not at risk.

But health officials had identified 70 people who came into close enough contact with her to warrant medical observation. Two are friends or relatives who cared for the woman before she came to the hospital; five are paramedics or hospital workers who handled her or her specimens without protective gear before the nature of her illness was known.

Two of the workers deemed at high risk at Henderson General Hospital had been tested, showed no symptoms and were back at work, Loeb said. Symptoms for hemorrhagic fevers typically take 10 to 21 days to appear. The illnesses are contagious once a patient shows such symptoms as a high fever, aching joints or vomiting, the doctors said.

The news of the workers back on the job didn’t necessarily reassure the dozens of people who must wait for two weeks to be sure they are clear of the disease. One lab technician who is pregnant handled the woman’s specimens with her bare hands before the nature of the illness was clear.

The technician, who did not want to be identified, said her terror abated when she heard that the worst-case scenario had been ruled out. But as one of the few in the highest-risk category, she said she won’t breathe easy until the two-week incubation period has passed.

Debra Mattina, a union representative for hospital workers, also remained wary.

“We still don’t know what we’re dealing with. How can they tell me I can’t catch it if they don’t know what it is?” she said. She noted that even the high-risk staffers had been told to keep working but that some have taken sick leave and sent their families to stay elsewhere until they can be sure that they didn’t contract anything.

“The first time everybody saw AIDS, they didn’t know what the heck it was either,” Mattina said. “You have to ask what if it’s something new, some new strain we haven’t seen yet.”