With the number of Sars deaths continuing to grow, the World Health Organisation has issued a warning against travel to Toronto, Beijing, and China's Shanxi province.
David Heymann, the WHO's director of communicable diseases, said that the recommendation to postpone non-essential travel would be in effect for at least three weeks, twice the maximum incubation period of the flu-like severe acute respiratory syndrome.
On April 2, the WHO warned that travellers should avoid the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where the disease is believed to have originated, and Hong Kong, where 105 people have died of Sars.
"Today, we're recommending that people who have unnecessary travel to Shanxi, to Beijing and to Toronto postpone that travel if possible.
"This is because, as was the case for Hong Kong and Guangdong, these areas now have quite a high magnitude of disease, a great risk of transmission locally - outside of the usual health workers - and they have also been exporting cases to other countries," said Dr Heymann. He added that one other country, which he did not name, could be added to the travel warning list by Monday.
More than 4,000 people have been infected with Sars worldwide. At least 251 have died, most of them in mainland China and Hong Kong.
Canada is the only country outside Asia to have recorded deaths from Sars. Officials in Toronto announced today that a 64-year-old man had become the 15th person in the country to die of the illness.
"Toronto last week had an exportation which set up a cluster of five cases in health workers in another country. This is what called it again to our attention," said Dr Heymann, who spoke by telephone from Thailand. He would not reveal where the disease had spread to from the Canadian city, or the two locations in China.
Toronto has reported 136 Sars cases, while Beijing has reported 482. In Shanxi, just to the west of the capital, 120 people have been reported as ill.
The Chinese island province of Hainan, which has not reported any Sars cases, suspended airline links with Hong Kong and foreign countries in an attempt to keep out the disease, the official Xinhua News Agency said today. It was not immediately clear how many flights or destinations would be affected.
In Beijing, an infrared body temperature scanner has been set up at the capital's airport to check passengers for fever, a Sars symptom, news reports said. The reports added that similar devices are to be set up at train stations and airports in Shanghai, the county's biggest city.
