Helen Branswell, Medical reporter for The Canadian Press tweeted on October 4th: "Story (not mine) earlier in the week suggesting Canada had an imported #MERS case not correct. Test negative, hospital spokesperson says.

My limited understanding of the market is that News Networks or media outlets can obtain/purchase articles and research from entities like the Assoicated Press, etc. So if you have 5 news agencies who all got the same story: Ie.-Sun News, CBC, Globe and Mail, etc. and the Assoc. Press find they made a mistake and retract or modify the report to be more accurate, you will also see that reflected in those using the original article.

Not sure if this is the case, but a possibility if ALL these agencies removed the same specific article.

Thanks, thecrownsown. I do not think the testing of the woman for MERS would necessarily amount to anything. I was just wondering why the article had been removed from all the sites. I guess I thought it seemed potentially suspicious because if there was just a mistake in the article, I thought they would have just printed a correction. I have seen this before. Removing it entirely strikes me as something different, but who knows.

Thecrownown is right about the method in which the media obtains some of their articles. Retraction of an article is less expensive than printing a correction. This practice does not happen often but is it does happen from time to time. Plus in this case I assume their legal departments advised that it best not to leave the article out there as it would lead to an undo public concern. Not everyone would read the correction piece.