The World Health Organisation (WHO) today warned against travel to the Chinese capital Beijing, as well as to Shanxi province and Canada's business capital Toronto to try to halt the spread of the SARS virus.
Beijing is the hardest hit place in the country that, with 106 deaths, has the world's highest death toll from SARS. Authorities in the city have ordered schools closed for two weeks from Thursday, a move that will affect an estimated 1.7 million children, to control the soaring number of SARS infections.
Fear about the economic impact was also growing with a leading investment bank predicting China's economy, one of the fastest growing in the world, was likely to shrink this quarter and the WTO said the epidemic would contribute to a gloomy year.
Hong Kong, which also reported more deaths and infections, announced a $1.5 billion package to help businesses reeling from the impact of the disease. The city has now had 105 SARS deaths.
In Singapore, where there have been 189 infections and 17 deaths, alarm was growing over an outbreak among vendors at the city-state's largest vegetable market and the government threatened to jail people violating quarantine.
In Canada, the only country outside Asia where people have died from the disease, the death toll rose to 15.
China has more than half of the world's known 4,500 SARS cases and panic has begun surfacing after the government allowed state media to report fully on the disease.
The illness, whose symptoms include high fever, a dry cough and difficulty in breathing, has killed more than 250 people around the world. Most patients survive, but health officials say the mortality rate has risen from four percent to 5.9 percent and there is no known cure.
No one is sure in how many ways it can spread. Droplets from sneezing and coughing are one way, but there is concern the virus may also be transmitted by touching objects such as lift buttons and by faecal matter.