Today's meeting of the Department of Health's expert group on SARS will consider specific measures to enable teams from Canada and China to attend the Special Olympics next month.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, was unsure yesterday however if all the excluded teams would eventually be allowed to participate.
Among the proposals to be considered by the expert group will be the movement of athletes from areas in China with active SARS transmission for a ten-day period before they travel to the Republic. The World Health Organisation (WHO) last week removed Guangdong province and Hong Kong from its SARS travel advisory list. China is due to host the next Special Olympics and it is believed that pressure to have the Chinese team in Dublin has contributed to the proposal.
Toronto, Canada, was yesterday added to the list of areas with recent local SARS transmission following new clusters of disease linked to four Toronto hospitals. But WHO stopped short of recommending restrictions on travel to Toronto in its latest SARS update.
However, if the situation in Toronto continues to worsen then the movement of athletes to an area of Canada unaffected by the virus for a ten-day period prior to travel could offer a possible method to avoid a "ban" on the Canadian team.
A number of sources have confirmed that these proposals will be discussed at today's meeting. But the group will also consider the infrastructural and resource issues which it is understood formed the basis of its initial decision to advise the Minister not to invite a number of countries to participate in the games.
The WHO issued an interpretation of "areas with recent local transmission" on Monday.
"A recent history of travel to an area where local transmission outside a confined setting, such as the health care environment, is occurring can assist physicians in the interpretation of symptoms in international travellers," it stated.
Meanwhile the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, indicated yesterday that China and Taiwan might ultimately be the only two teams excluded from participating in the games.
Mr Martin also implied that he did not believe the renewed SARS outbreak in Toronto would affect the Canadian team's participation in the games, although he emphasised that decisions would be based on the advice of his Department's expert committee.
The Minister told reporters that he was confident Singapore would be taken off the World Health Organisation list of SARS-affected areas, and he was "reasonably confident" about Hong Kong.
A delegation from the Special Olympics in Washington, meanwhile, has flown over for today's meeting of the SARS expert group, where they will press for as many athletes as possible to be admitted to the games.
A spokeswoman for the organisers said: "We would like all athletes to attend. They have trained for years and are all looking forward to it. Participating in the Special Olympics would be a life-changing experience in itself."
Mr Martin warned against any premature assessment and said the Government's position was that athletes could take part if criteria laid down by the expert committee were met.
Asked if this meant he was hopeful that China and Taiwan might be the only teams excluded, he said: "Yes, we were hopeful even from last week."
At that stage all of the affected countries had reported to a plenary session of the WHO.
The Minister also had separate meetings with the Minister of Health from Hong Kong, and the Minister of State for Health from Singapore.
"You could see from the graphs the degree to which the situation had come under control in Hong Kong and the measures they had taken.
"And from our own conversations with WHO officials, they were expressing a lot of confidence in the Hong Kong situation, and in Singapore as well, but less confidence in terms of the China and Taiwan situation," he said.