SARS scare delays plane at airport in San Jose.

Byline: From Register-Guard and News Service Reports

An airliner from Asia was briefly halted on a tarmac in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday because of a scare over a mystery illness - the most dramatic sign yet that the disease blamed for more than 70 deaths worldwide is provoking worry in the United States.

As it turned out, none of the five passengers who caused concern among the flight crew had the disease.

Seventy cases of the illness, severe acute respiratory syndrome, called SARS, are suspected in the United States, but no one has died. Worldwide, there are about 1,800 cases.

The United Nations health agency today advised travelers to avoid going to Hong Kong and the Chinese province of Guangdong because of the outbreak.

The World Health Organization said it was taking the action because at least nine foreign businessmen have caught Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, in Hong Kong and returned with it to their home countries.

The California airport incident was the first time a plane has been stopped in the United States for fear of passengers spreading the disease. Some passengers and health officials called it an overreaction.

U.S. health officials are not considering quarantines so far because the disease is not spreading as rapidly as in Asia and the related outbreak in Toronto.

Health officials said Tuesday that two more people in Canada have died because of the illness, bringing the country's total deaths to six.

In Hong Kong, about 240 residents of an apartment complex where SARS has spread were taken away to quarantine camps on Tuesday.

But such measures don't yet appear warranted in the United States, said Tommy Thompson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Nine people died of severe acute respiratory syndrome in March in the Chinese province of Guangdong, officials said today, as the U.S. State Department authorized nonessential employees and family members to leave the province.

The new deaths in the southern Guangdong province where the disease is believed to have originated brought the total number of acknowledged deaths in China to at least 43.

Oregon public health officials have contacted doctors and other medical providers to prepare for a possible SARS infection here, said Ann Thomas, medical epidemiologist with the Oregon Health Division.

"We have sent out alerts to our local health departments, emergency room doctors, infection control practitioners, to be on the lookout for something that fits the case definition of SARS, to let us know right away," she said.

A few doctors have called the state with concerns about patients who might have SARS symptoms, but none have turned out to be that disease.

It's turned out that the patients had pneumonia or influenza, she said.

At the University of Oregon, officials are passing along information about the illness to students who are studying abroad.

There are nearly a dozen UO students studying in Hong Kong, China, Thailand and Japan, but none has expressed a desire to come home because of the outbreak, said Cari Vanderkar, overseas program coordinator at the UO.