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For the second time in 17 years, Canada’s largest city has become this country’s ground zero in the fight to contain an outbreak of a newly identified organism that is spreading worldwide.

A Toronto man in his 50s was confirmed Sunday as Canada’s first presumed case of the rogue virus known as 2019-nCov, a coronavirus that surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan on New Year’s Eve. Officials are urging calm as they work to contain the illness in Canada and rapidly trace passengers who were seated within a two-metre radius of the man, who was already experiencing symptoms when he boarded his transoceanic flight home to Toronto.

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The man said during airport screening that he’d been in the province where the virus originated and had a “mild cough,” but was allowed to go on his way, Dr. Theresa Tam, head of the Public Health Agency of Canada, said Monday.

The man, now in hospital in Toronto, was interviewed by a Canada Border Services Agency officer after he got off a flight from Guangzhou, China at Toronto’s Pearson airport, said Tam. He had indicated on an electronic questionnaire that he had been in Wuhan, she said.