Hong Kong is battling to stop a new outbreak of the highly infectious SARS virus as World Health Organization (WHO) experts in China tried to find the source of the disease.
More than 10 staff at Hong Kong's United Christian hospital have fallen ill with the disease in the past few days, raising fears a new wave of infections was just beginning and the epidemic in the territory was not contained.
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A monk wearing a mask to protect himself SARS fans himself at a prayer meeting in Hong Kong
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The hospital is treating more than 100 other victims of the disease.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which has killed 81 people and infected nearly 2,400 worldwide after first showing up in China's southern province of Guangdong, has triggered precautions in a growing number of countries.
Israel is the latest country to allow family members of its consulate staff to leave Hong Kong.
The United States moved yesterday to offer non-emergency staff and all dependents at its embassy and five consulates in China free flights out on a voluntary basis. Washington had confined such a move only to diplomatic staff in Hong Kong and the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Tuesday, but extended that decision to all of China.
Canada announced it would cancel a big medical convention by the American Association for Cancer Research because some doctors, especially those who were caring for SARS patients, feared they could spread the disease.
A team from the WHO, which first warned against travel to southern China and Hong Kong because of the disease, is hunting for clues to the source of the virus in Guangdong.
Hong Kong's Cable Television reported that the Guangdong Disease Control Center now had data showing patients in the early stage of the outbreak were cooks and bird vendors, and that it suspected the virus was linked to animals.
Police are also hunting for at least 200 people who had been exposed to the disease but who broke a quarantine order earlier this week.