WHO team to go to Taiwan after sharp rise in SARS cases
HONG KONG (AFP) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was sending a team to Taiwan, where SARScases have tripled over the past 10 days, as the island's president called off state visits for fear the epidemic may worsen.

China has given the WHO permission to go to Taiwan, WHO spokeswoman Mangai Balasegaram said in Beijing. China, which replaced Taiwan in the United Nations systems in 1971, considers the island part of its territory awaiting reunification.

"It is a standard procedure, WHO works in Taiwan through China," she said.

The island has become increasingly concerned about Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) after outbreaks at two hospitals, which have been isolated. Four more deaths reported on Friday took Taiwan's death toll to seven, with 102 cases

As concern about the disease grew on the island, President Chen Shui-bian's office announced he had put off visits to Costa Rica, Belize, Haiti and Dominican Republic due this month to stay at home and deal with the crisis.

The Philippines meanwhile announced a planned emergency bill to check the spread of SARS.

"I'll be certifying as urgent, a proposed SARS act," President Gloria Arroyo said in a statement on radio in the Philippines, where two people have died from the pneumonia-like disease from the worldwide death toll of 417.

Later, at a national conference on dealing with SARS, Arroyo announced a week-long nationwide clean-up campaign starting on Monday, saying there was evidence the virus could be spread by cockroaches.

In Canada the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) urged its 188 member states to screen all airline passengers arriving from, or transiting through, SARS-infected areas in a bid to halt the virus.

While the risk of in-flight transmission of SARS was small, "the fear and uncertainty caused by this disease... have led to a steep drop in travel in general and, most notably, in air passenger numbers and airline revenues," ICAO council president Assad Kotaite said.

Outside of Asia, Canada is the country hardest hit by SARS with 23 deaths.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Friday promised to release 100 million dollars (70 million US) to fight SARS, which has driven away tourists as well as politicians.

Officials in Canada said they had confined the outbreak to health care settings, and Ontario's commissioner of health said the country was in the "countdown" of getting off the World Health Organisation's (WHO) list SARS-affected regions.

Vietnam, which has had five SARS deaths, is the only affected country to have achieved this goal after passing 20 days -- twice the SARS incubation period -- without a new case.

The WHO has warned though that Vietnam still faced the threat of a new outbreak of SARS being imported by travellers from China, the world's worst affected country, and other infected areas.

In a bid to avoid a new outbreak, Hanoi on Friday sent the first of 2,000 students due to return from China over the next few days to a quarantine centre for 14 days.

China, where the disease originated in November although its extent was initially masked by a cover-up, is home to two-thirds of the world's more than 6,000 SARS infections and has recorded 181 deaths, most of them in Beijing where nearly 14,000 residents are under quarantine.

In Hong Kong, where 170 people have from SARS since it was first recorded here mid-March, scientists said Friday the virus was mutating.

"It can either change it into a more virulent virus. On the other hand it can make it into a tamer virus," Professor Dennis Law of the Chinese University's Faculty of Medicine said.

The WHO has identified a coronavirus as the cause of SARS, for which there is no vaccine.

Other confirmed SARS deaths have occurred in Malaysia (2), the Philippines (2), Singapore (25) and Thailand (2).