The World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued a warning to travellers and airlines saying a mystery killer respiratory illness has become a "worldwide health threat" after spreading beyond Asia.
Releasing a rare "emergency travel advisory", the United Nations health agency said that an ill passenger had been taken to an isolation unit in Frankfurt, Germany, today after being removed from a plane en route from New York to Singapore.
A spokesman for the Geneva-based body said there were also reports that two people had died in Canada, taking the death toll to eight since the first outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), an atypical pneumonia of which the cause is not yet known, was detected in China last month.
Among the dead is an American businessman who was taken ill in Hanoi after visiting Shanghai. He died on Thursday in Hong Kong where 47 cases have been reported.
Another 41 people are feared to have been infected in Hanoi and cases have been reported in Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
"This syndrome, SARS, is now a worldwide health threat," said WHO director general Mr Gro Harlem Brundtland in a statement.