ASIA: The respiratory disease spreading across Asia claimed a second victim in Singapore yesterday. Schools closed in the city-state and in Hong Kong in the hope of containing the illness.
A Protestant minister who fell ill after visiting an infected parishioner was the second reported Singaporean victim of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
Some 600,000 students will be kept out of school until April 6th and at least 861 people in the city-state are under orders to stay at home in an attempt to contain the spread of the illness.
Education Minister Teo Chee Hean said international schools were advised to "also close if they wish to do so". While Hong Kong authorities ordered only six schools to close their doors because of the virus, more than 50 did so voluntarily yesterday.
Parents across the region were gripped by uncertainty, and rumours the disease was spreading beyond control gripped densely-populated Singapore, where the number of SARS cases rose to 74, with 10 patients in a serious condition.
SARS has already been blamed for 10 deaths in Hong Kong, four in Vietnam and three in Canada.
The disease was brought to Singapore by three travellers who had visited Hong Kong, where they were believed to have been infected by a Chinese doctor who eventually died.
Singapore has strongly advised against unnecessary travel to Hong Kong and Hanoi, and Guangdong province in southern China - strongly suspected to be the origin of the outbreak.
The municipal health bureau of Shanghai, China's commercial centre, said no cases of the virus had been reported there.
Canada has issued a travel advisory warning visitors away from Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Guangdong. Singaporean Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang said: "Very soon, people will look at us and put us in the same category as Vietnam."
Tourism is a major earner in the city-state, generating about nine billion Singapore dollars (approximately €4.7 billion) in revenues last year.