Thirty-two Hong Kong travellers who have been held in quarantine in their hotel rooms in Taiwan since Sunday will be allowed to return home today if an accompanying girl is cleared of Sars.
The travellers were ordered to be isolated at the Kilin Hotel in Taipei after a six-year-old girl went down with a fever and was admitted to Taiwan University Hospital on Sunday.
The managing director of the Chung Hwa Travel Service, Chang Liang-jen, who is the de facto Taiwanese consul-general in Hong Kong, said a doctor at the hospital found the girl, whose temperature later went down, to have no symptoms of the disease.
But Taiwan's Department of Health decided yesterday that further diagnosis was needed and a final decision would be made this afternoon, he said. Mr Chang said the tour members would be allowed to leave Taiwan today if the girl was cleared.
In Taiwan, people who have been in contact with those who have contracted the disease have to be quarantined for 10 days. The authorities also announced on Sunday that visitors from Hong Kong and the mainland would be quarantined for 10 days on arrival.
A spokeswoman for Hong Kong's Constitutional Affairs Bureau said they had contacted Mr Chang yesterday about the tour group's situation.