The World Health Organization has agreed to reassess its travel advisory to Toronto over the SARS outbreak and could decide within days whether to lift it, federal Health Minister Anne McLellan said Thursday.

Speaking from Edmonton, McLellan told reporters that in her "frank" discussion with WHO head Gro Harlem Brundtland Thursday morning, she asked that the reassessment of the travel advisory -- slapped on Toronto on Wednesday -- be conducted as quickly as possible.

"She didn't indicate a specific time but left me with the impression that the reassessment could take place in a reasonably short period of time," McLellan said.

"Perhaps a number of days as opposed to weeks."

WHO later admitted to a series of embarrassing missteps in its handling of the situation. That includes a WHO official who erroneously implied the travel advisory could last longer than three weeks. Another official admitted the WHO may not have given Health Canada 24 hours' notice of the advisory.

Communications director Dick Thompson, in an interview with The Canadian Press, called it a "breakdown in communications."

"I think that we're willing to acknowledge that there was some kind of mistake, that they didn't receive the message. I don't know how that happened. And I think we're ready to accept some blame here. That's for sure."

Earlier in the day, health officials in Canada were convinced the advisory won't be lifted early.

Dr. Donald Low, chief microbiologist at the Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital said Toronto was being used as a "scapegoat."

"No, they're not going to change their minds," he told a daily news briefing. "This is politics now. And they'll never go back no matter how wrong they are, and they know they're wrong.

"We're now in a position where we're stuck with this decision and we're going to have to live with it."

• SARS cases chart from Health Canada 
  

Health Canada's Dr. Peter Gully shares that view, telling an earlier news conference, "Our impression at the present time is that they are not thinking seriously about lifting the advisory."

The WHO advisory has lumped Toronto in with the world's SARS hot zones, including Hong Kong, Beijing, the Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Shanxi. It is to last up to three weeks.

Toronto has already lost millions in tourism dollars and cancelled conferences over the outbreak, which has killed 16 people. That's in sharp contrast to the more than 100 dead in China, where the number of infections is climbing daily. Toronto has not recorded a new SARS infection in days.

While the WHO says travel to Toronto is unsafe, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control disagrees.

"There is no suggestion that a traveller going to Toronto is inadvertently coming into contact with a SARS patient," CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding told a news conference Thursday.

The CDC issued a Toronto travel alert earlier this week, which essentially warned people to avoid situations where the risk of contracting SARS would be higher, such as health-care settings. Gerberding said there is no reason to upgrade that alert based on the WHO decision.

"We can predict so far in Toronto where the patterns of transmission are leading us and there is no evidence that travellers to that area are at any different risk of acquiring SARS then they are going to any number of other countries in the world where sporadic cases have cropped up among returning travellers."

Disputing the criteria

The WHO and health officials from Ontario spoke in a conference call Thursday morning about the advisory for the first time. The discussions were described as "disappointing and troubling" by Dr. James Young, Ontario's commissioner of public safety.

He called their process a "one-size-fits-all" and said it "does not fit the North American landscape."

The WHO said the decision to issue a travel advisory was based on three criteria: The size of the outbreak, the way the disease is transmitted -- in other words, whether spread is confined to health-care workers and their contacts or if it is spreading in the community at large -- and whether the jurisdiction is exporting cases to other parts of the world.

The WHO said Canada met all three of these criteria, adding there had been confirmed export of SARS cases from Toronto to Australia, to the Philippines and to the U.S.

Health officials said Thursday the WHO is wrong on all counts with relation to Canada.

Dr. Colin D'Cunha, Ontario's chief medical officer of health, said the numbers of SARS cases in Ontario are now decreasing. He said as of noon on Thursday, there are a total of 257 cases -- 136 probable and 121 suspect -- and of that number, 132 people have been discharged with a clean bill of health. "That's more than half the total number of cases."

Young said they are "puzzled and confused" as to why the advisory is being issued now, "instead of doing so several weeks ago when in fact our problem was starting."

As for the chain of transmission, health officials said it has not spread into the general community from the health-care setting. All cases are still linked back to the original cases at Scarborough Grace Hospital. "This is very different than the Chinese situation," Young said. "And we continue to point out to them that we have not had a new community cases in over one cycle."

The issue of international spread was also disputed by health officials. Young said WHO has no clear evidence that the woman who travelled from Toronto to Manila and died while in the Philippines of a respiratory illness indeed had SARS, and got it from Toronto.

He added they have researched the cases of three Canadian children who were earlier reported to have come down with SARS while on vacation in SARS. "We have no reason to believe that these people who lived well away from the Scarborough area were in fact infected in Toronto, or if in fact they were infected at all."

In a teleconference early Thursday, WHO spokesperson Dr. Julie Hall said the WHO was also looking into a report a Bulgarian man who recently visited Toronto may have become infected with SARS during his trip.

"We cannot confirm anything at this moment in time," she said.

Young said the WHO has no idea whether that person lived in Toronto or just flew out of Toronto. "And that is simply not good science."

Health officials have invited a WHO team to come to Toronto to see the situation first-hand, but the team has said it does not have enough personnel to do that. Health officials in Ontario have also offered to go there for discussions.

Other developments:

• Conservative leader Joe Clark says Ottawa's leadership on the SARS outbreak has been awful and it's time for the prime minister to get personally involved.
• Ontario Premier Ernie Eves, who has so far kept a low profile during the deadly SARS outbreak, is offering compensation to those under quarantine.
• Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman says he has asked for a moratorium on evictions for people unable to pay their rent because of SARS. Lastman also says he'll ask major banks to allow customers adversely affected by SARS to defer payment on loans and mortgages.
• British Airways will no longer rest its cabin and flight crew in Toronto following the British government's travel advisory regarding Toronto, according to the company's web site.
• Medical staff from the Canadian military could be called upon to aid Ontario health-care workers, according to reports.
• Guelph, Ont. has its first suspected SARS case. A young girl who recently visited China is displaying SARS-like symptoms.

With reports from Canadian Press