, Singapore and elsewhere were wearing surgical masks.

"There's nothing we can do about it, so we have to take precautions," one visitor told Hong Kong's Cable TV.

Cathay Pacific airline said it had ordered staff not to check in passengers showing symptoms of illness and to refer them for medical assessment.

A spokesman for the Geneva-based WHO said there were reports two people from the same family had died in Canada, taking the death toll to nine worldwide since the first outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), an atypical pneumonia whose cause is not yet known, was detected in China in February.

The disease infected four other members of the Canadian family, and on Saturday a woman who had been in close contact with them fell sick with the symptoms, Canadian health authorities said on Sunday.

"This syndrome, SARS, is now a worldwide health threat," WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland said in a statement.

The illness, which starts with flu-like symptoms such as coughing, high fever and shortness of breath, can deteriorate rapidly into pneumonia. Dozens of people in Hong Kong and Vietnam, many of them hospital staff, are also infected and numbers have been rising steadily in Singapore and Taiwan.

U.S. health officials said on Saturday they were investigating reports that two people passing through Atlanta and New York had the illness. They gave no other details.

Six more infections were reported in Hong Kong and Singapore on Sunday. WHO said it had also received reports of cases in Indonesia and Thailand, but it gave no details.

In southern China, 305 people contracted severe pneumonia in February and five died. WHO and other experts are studying if there are links between these cases and others elsewhere.

EMERGENCY TRAVEL ADVISORY Cathay said one of its passengers had respiratory problems during a flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver on March 6. It was checking if any of its staff had come into contact with the man.

In a rare emergency travel advisory, WHO said a Singapore doctor who treated some of the first pneumonia patients in the island republic had been taken ill and had to be removed from a plane in Frankfurt. He is now in an isolation unit.

A doctor in Frankfurt said the 32-year-old patient's condition had worsened on Sunday and he would stay in isolation as long as there was a suspicion he had been infected.

Doctor Hans Brodt said the man's 62-year old mother-in-law was also on the isolation unit as she had developed a high fever. His pregnant wife had not shown any signs of the illness. She was in quarantine.

The two women had accompanied the doctor from Singapore on a trip to New York for a medical conference. The man had already shown symptoms of fever and aching bones on his flight to New York, Brodt said.

In Hong Kong, the government has repeatedly played down fears of the virus spreading outside the medical community.

But the Apple Daily newspaper said two women who had probably caught pneumonia while visiting Hangzhou, China, were rushed to hospital on return to Hong Kong on Saturday.

A family of six who recently visited the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai also developed flu-like symptoms after returning to Hong Kong. One of them was now showing signs of pneumonia, the paper said.

EFFECTIVE TREATMENT

The Hong Kong government has said only that there were no signs of any unusual rise in the number of pneumonia cases. There are about 300 cases a week.

Two more hospital staff were themselves hospitalized on Sunday, bringing to 49 the number of cases in Hong Kong, with 42 of them battling severe pneumonia, up from 37 on Saturday.

Health Minister Yeoh Eng-kiong said two patients who had been seriously ill were recovering and one would be discharged soon.

"We have effective treatment, but it's not 100 percent," Yeoh said, adding that some patients had responded well to a combination of anti-viral drugs and steroids.

An American businessman died in Hong Kong on Thursday after being flown from Hanoi with respiratory problems.

Four more people in Singapore showed symptoms of the illness on Sunday, bringing the total to 20. Three of them were recently in Hong Kong and the rest are either family, close friends or medical staff who had been taking care of the three.

In Taiwan, three people have contracted the disease, with two of them having visited southern China recently.

France and Japan have sent medical experts to Vietnam, where 46 hospital staff are ill in Hanoi. A Hanoi nurse died of the virus on Saturday.

REUTERS Rtr 12:54 03-16-03

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[Too much chemtrail spraying, that's where it's coming from]

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