Staff and patients of a Malaysian mental institution were quarantined Sunday after three patients displayed Sars symptoms, the Health Ministry said.

The quarantine, which begins Sunday, involves at least 284 people in a mental institution in Kuching, Sarawak, the ministry's deputy director-general Ismail Merican told reporters.

Three patients at the institution had fallen ill earlier this month and were hospitalised for pneumonia, he said.

Possibility

Chest x-rays had shown changes in their lungs, Ismail said, raising the possibility that it could be an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars).

A fourth patient, a 44-year-old woman, was also admitted to hospital with pneumonia April 19 but died April 22, Ismail said.

The hospital did not attribute her death to Sars, but had not carried out any sort of post-mortem investigation, Hassan Abdul Rahman, an official in the ministry's Sars Operations Room, told AFP Sunday.

"We are very proactive, so knowing this has happened, we have quarantined quite a lot of people. The whole hospital, about 280 people are quarantined ... in that mental hospital," Ismail said.

Ismail noted that a patient at the unnamed mental institution had received visitors from Hong Kong four weeks ago.

Proactive action

Hong Kong is o­ne of the countries worst-hit by Sars, with 133 deaths since the outbreak. However, Ismail said the visitors had been traced and found to be well.

"Officers have checked their wheareabouts in Hong Kong and we found they are still very well. The 74-year-old woman whom they visited is also well. Her chest x-ray is normal," he said.

"The fact that there is this link and the fact that there was o­ne death, we decided to be proactive. We will be sending all the specimens for tests. We want to be sure," he said.

The government will be sending a top-level team from the disease control department "to investigate and understand the situation, and see how best we can help to contain the problem and allay any fears and panic," Ismail said. - AFP