Media reports yesterday said US citizens are to be advised to leave areas affected by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) including China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan if possible and avoid non-essential and recreational travel to the destinations.
Agence France-Press reported that the US was set to curtail government visits to China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan and to warn Americans against travel there due to the outbreak of a mysterious new deadly respiratory disease, US officials said Thursday.
The restrictions on official travel and the warning to US citizens are expected to be announced by the State Department and the US' Centers for Disease Control by Friday, US time, they told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Under the new guidelines, all non-essential travel by US government employees to China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan would be suspended until further notice, the officials said.
The travel warnings would also urge US citizens to defer "non-essential and recreational travel" to the four places and suggest that those already there consider leaving, the officials said.
American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) spokesperson Judith Mudd-Krijgelmans, however, refused to comment on the Agence France-Press report saying AIT had received no travel advisory updates for Taiwan.
Worries intensified yesterday that SARS was spreading via air travel after world health officials said people exposed to the disease should be barred from planes.
Underlining the latest fears, Singapore Airlines announced that a flight attendant on a flight through Frankfurt with an infected doctor had been diagnosed the illness.
The disease has sickened more than 1,400 and caused 50 deaths -- most of them in Asia, prompting Singapore in recent days to close all of its schools.
The Chinese rugby association said yesterday the Beijing leg of the Rugby Sevens tournament scheduled for April 5-6 had been canceled because of the outbreak. The Hong Kong leg will go ahead this weekend, even though Argentina, France and Italy pulled out.
Taiwan announced measures yesterday requiring arriving passengers to fill out new forms about their health.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that people with SARS symptoms -- which include high fever, dry cough, sore throat and joint pain -- or those who may have been exposed should be kept off airplanes.
The Geneva-based WHO said airlines should be on the lookout for possible SARS victims among people flying out of hard-hit places, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Toronto,Hanoi, Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai and China's Guangdong Province.
More than half of the SARS cases and deaths were in Guangdong, and a sick medical professor from there brought the disease to Hong Kong last month, spreading it to people who then passed it on to Vietnam, Singapore and Canada when they flew to those places.
Health officials believe the infection is spread largely by very close contact through coughing and sneezing. But some people who are infected but showing no symptoms may be transmitting it, the WHO said Thursday.
The Singapore Airlines flight attendant who was on the plane from New York to Frankfurt had a fever and had been classed as a probable case" of SARS.
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