Anchor Bay Entertainment has just announced a DVD version of the medical thriller, made for TV, Plague City: SARS that will come to retailers later this year.

Based on true events and bolstered by extensive research with medical experts, “Plague City” brings to television the stories of the actual heroes of the SARS crisis: the many health care workers who risked their lives on a daily basis caring for sick and dying patients. At the same time, the movie underscores the struggle of Toronto’s public health officials and politicians as they attempted to control the quickly spreading disease, suppress the rising public panic and mitigate the devastating economic repercussions.

“Plague City” takes us from the town in China where a small scratch on a butcher’s hand, inflicted by an infected civet cat, kicks off a deadly chain of infection that lands, quite randomly, in Toronto. Without diagnostic criteria, effective treatments or definitive infection controls, the number of diagnosed cases and deaths from SARS mounted steadily. And with panic spreading faster than the virus, the once clean and healthy city of Toronto became the pariah of the western world. Restaurants, theatres and streets emptied, and incoming travel and tourism were virtually shut down.

This hot-topic DVD will be in stores on October 10.