Until the WHO warning, ALA had maintained that because the city was doing an expert job of containing the disease, no plans to cancel the conference were being considered. The WHO travel advisory, however, generated a new wave of inquiries from concerned potential attendees, and ALA President Maurice Freedman issued a statement on the same day as the advisory saying that the Association’s Executive Board was “looking at all of our options.”
The board is expected to make a decision April 29. The ALA staff is also monitoring reports from the Centers for Disease Control and investigating what other cities might be able to host the conference. Health Canada pointed out that no new cases had been found in the community in 19 days, almost two incubation periods.
According to the April 24 National Post Canadian newspaper, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre says that only two out of the 600 events the city hosts in a year have canceled. The American Association for Cancer Research pulled its 12,000-person conference, which was scheduled for April, and the American Association of Vascular Surgery, with 3,000 potential attendees, has moved its June conference to Chicago. With ALA attendance projections at 25,000, if the Association pulls out, it will be the largest meeting yet to abandon the Toronto venue because of SARS.
Posted April 28, 2003.