TORONTO - A health-care worker died of SARS (news - web sites) on Wednesday, becoming the 44th person killed by the pneumonia-like illness in Canada's largest city and the second to die this week.

The latest deaths come nearly six weeks after the World Health Organization (news - web sites) removed Toronto from its list of SARS-infected areas, saying the city had contained the outbreak.

Eight people remain hospitalized with severe acute respiratory syndrome in Toronto, where almost 250 cases were recorded in two outbreaks earlier this year.

The latest SARS victim was identified by Ontario health officials as a 54-year-old male health care worker. The illness previously killed two Canadian nurses.

On Monday, a 44-year-old patient died of SARS in Toronto.

SARS emerged in November in Guangdong province in southern China. It killed more than 800 people worldwide, most of them in Asia, before subsiding last month, according to WHO.

Toronto had the biggest outbreak outside of Asia.