Barriers Go Up As Sars Fears Grow in China

"Go away! Don't come any further!" yelled the three housewives doing guard duty at the entrance to their village. "This is a clean area. Strangers are not welcome here."

Unarmed, the women could only gesture furiously to ward off the outsider who ventured towards their roadblock - two logs dragged across the dust track into their community.

"It's nothing personal," one explained more softly after this visitor made it clear he would talk from a safe distance and keep his mask on. "We just can't afford to take any chances with Sars."

The anxiety seen here at Xiaotangshan, 30 minutes north of Beijing, is growing in China, where the deadly epidemic continues to spread.

With the nationwide casualty rate rising to 159 deaths and 3,460 infections, towns and villages across the country are reportedly refusing entry to strangers and quarantining residents who return from areas considered at risk.

In Beijing, which has been worst affected - another 101 cases and seven more fatalities were reported in the capital yesterday - the mayor warned that the rising hysteria could have political implications.

"As the panic of the public has not yet been alleviated, a great deal of work is needed to ensure social stability." said Wang Qishan, whose predecessor was sacked last week for covering up the problem. It is not that people are taking to the streets. Far from it. With schools and cinemas closed and workers told to stay at home, Beijing's traffic jams have disappeared. So have the crowds that thronged shopping centres and parks. The gleaming Oriental Plaza shopping centre is eerily empty and - like the city airport, many taxi and bus terminals - it smells of disinfectant.

Lives have changed. Women no longer talk of fashion, but of where to buy the best Japanese P95 face masks. Old men are told that they must curb their habit of spitting in the street. Banks are quarantining notes for a day in case money is spreading the virus. Underground trains, where air cannot easily circulate, are almost empty, but shops are selling out of bicycles.

People look at their friends with suspicion. "I don't really want to meet anyone right now," said Tina Li, a 27-year-old estate agent. "You never know who might have Sars."

It is a fertile climate for rumours. The Beijing mayor had to deny that the city would be sealed off and that the authorities are secretly using crop dusters to spray each night.

While the concern last week was that the government was covering up the problem, the worry now is that the authorities may be overwhelmed.

Despite emergency spending of 400m yuan (£30m) on anti-Sars measures, Mr Wang conceded that the health system was struggling to cope because of a shortage of beds at designated hospitals.

At an emergency quarantine centre in Xiaotangshan, doctors warned they were not ready for the hundreds of Sars patients the government was about to send them. The Xiaotangshan facility is a symbol of the government's enormous mobilisation of resources to fight the epidemic.

Hundreds of workers have laboured to erect the new hospital from scratch in less than a week. The army has dispatched 800 nurses and doctors. But only hours before the first 200 patients were to arrive last night, it looked more like a rubble-strewn building site than a medical facility.

"We are under orders to start tonight, but I don't think it is possible," said one doctor. "There is nowhere to sterilise bedding and equipment."

Having delayed its response for so long, however, Beijing can no longer afford to wait. Mayor Wang said the next week would be critical. Although the situation was "severe", the city now had measures in place to control the epidemic.

Toronto tried to get back to normal as the World Health Organisation lifted a travel advisory prompted by the Sars outbreak.