SARS has closed another hospital emergency ward in the Toronto area. Markham-Stouffville Hospital officials say the number of SARS patients coming to their facility became more than they could handle.

Hospital officials told CFTO's Caroline Jeba that they now have 12 SARS patients in isolation. Two are in critical condition and are being cared for in intensive care. The total number of SARS cases in Ontario is 138 -- that's up from six yesterday.

Dr. Donald Low, chief of microbiology at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, says it's not just the increase in SARS patients that has forced the hospital to close its emergency ward.

He said the facility has also been looking after the overflow of patients from Scarborough Grace and York Central hospitals. Both of those centres were closed due to SARS.

Toronto public health officials will be hosting information sessions throughout the week as they try to contain the spread of SARS.

Meanwhile, there was some good news in the battle against SARS over the weekend.

A Canadian lab in British Columbia became the first to sequence the coronavirus believed to be responsible for causing SARS.

The Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, part of the BC Cancer Agency, made the news public Saturday. Dr. Marco Marra said the sequencing data would be posted online so that researchers around the world could use it.

"Our intention is to release the data so that anybody who is wanting to help has the fundamental information that they would need," he said from Vancouver.

"The sequence is fundamental information and should be available for this purpose: for vaccine development, for diagnostics, for whatever."

Dr. Donald Low, the microbiologist-in-chief at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, said the development could lead to further breakthroughs.

"One is it should tell us where this damn thing came from, to start off with -- which would be valuable. Two, it might tell you if it's picked up pieces of RNA from other closely related viruses in the same family, which might explain why this thing is causing such a miserable disease," Low said.

"I guess the other thing is it might give you some vaccine candidates," he added.

Not everyone is convinced that the coronavirus is behind SARS. Canada's Dr. Frank Plummer, who runs Health Canada's national microbiology laboratory in Winnipeg, said he remains skeptical.

"In our data, the association between coronavirus and this disease seems to be getting weaker, rather than stronger," he said, adding that the sequencing data could help provide a firm answer in the debate.