Russia confirmed its first case of SARS today - a man in the Russian far east on the border with China.
"On the basis of medical analysis, this morning we received information confirming the first SARS case on Russian territory," a spokeswoman for Russia's top epidemiologist told Reuters by telephone.
The man diagnosed as suffering from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was in Blagoveshchensk on the Amur river, which forms the frontier with China, where the disease has killed hundreds and infected thousands.