Stomach bug detains Pearson travellers
Three passengers hospitalized for flu-like symtoms
Jan 08, 2008 10:46 PM
Tamsyn Burgmann
Jackson Hayes
More than 75 passengers returning from Tel Aviv were detained for a number of hours at Pearson airport last night after a few fell ill aboard the flight.
The plane, Air Canada flight 085 from Tel Aviv, landed just after 9 p.m. Tuesday carrying 201 passengers.
Health officials who met the passengers on the ground determined later they were suffering with acute gastroenteritis. Its symptoms include vomiting, nausea and diarrhea.
“It is our standard operating procedure to have health officials meet the aircraft on arrival in cases like this,” said Air Canada representative Angela Mah.
Passengers with symptoms were sent to hospital for assessment and treatment, said Alain Desroches with the Public Health Agency of Canada. Desroches said three people aboard the flight were sick.
However, one passenger said about eight people appeared sick and passengers weren’t met until they reached customs.
“They didn’t tell us anything,” said passenger Matt Coleman of the ordeal. “They totally kept us in the dark.
“They did not separate the sick people from the ones who weren’t sick. We were all just put in a room, given `bunny suits’ and told to stay put.”
Coleman, 19, said sick passengers began “getting feverish and throwing up in the lavatories.”
Some of the passengers on the plane, including those who became sick, were flying with Birthright travel groups: Tour guides that bring young Jewish Americans and Canadians on guided tours though Israel.
Coleman said the members of his party, which was organized by the travel group Oranim, were not the ones who fell ill. He said the ill travellers were with the group with Israel Amplified.
Desroches said emergency responders released 47 passengers with no symptoms and not part of the tour group to pass through customs, further assessing 25 from the same group and three more not part of the group before determining three had to be hospitalized.
Coleman said it was nearly two hours until he was cleared by health officials.
“They just took my temperature and it was regular so I could go.” He added that all the other passengers were allowed to leave with the exception of the original eight.
Attempts to contact the Greater Toronto Transit Authority were not successful.