A health ministry council decided Friday that individuals diagnosed with severe acute respiratory syndrome will be forcibly hospitalized -- even if they refuse to seek treatment.

The decision was made at a subcommittee meeting of the Health Sciences Council in which policies relating to SARS were discussed.

SARS has killed nearly 80 people and infected more than 2,000 worldwide.

The subcommittee also agreed to treat SARS as a new contagious disease under the law governing infectious diseases, as well as deciding on the criteria by which cases should be brought to the government's attention.

Earlier in the day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said that three new suspected cases of the deadly illness had emerged in Japan, bringing the total to 17.

None of these cases has yet been confirmed.

The killer ailment, whose cause is suspected to be a new type of corona virus, is believed to have originated in China's Guangdong Province in November.

Chikara Sakaguchi, minister of health labor and welfare, said Friday that he will ask local governments to prepare sickrooms featuring low air pressure in order to curb the outflow of viruses.

At present, there are only 22 beds in low air-pressure sickrooms nationwide. These are available at 12 medical centers in nine prefectures, including Chiba, Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka.

The subcommittee has decided that patients will be treated as SARS sufferers if they have returned from SARS-afflicted areas and have pneumonia and a fever of 38 C or higher, if they cannot be diagnosed with another illness, and if they fail to recover within three days of being given an antibiotic.

The subcommittee decided that in cases such as these, prefectural governors will inform the health minister, who will then convene a meeting of experts to decide whether the cases in question are SARS.

When a diagnosis is confirmed, measures including disinfection and forced hospitalization will be implemented.

The law on infectious diseases classifies 74 kinds of illnesses into four categories, depending on their severity. Illnesses such as Ebola hemorrhagic fever are in the top category.

The law allows prefectural governors to handle life-threatening contagious diseases with unknown causes via measures such as forced hospitalization.

Governors need the approval of the health ministry's council.

Atsuko Toyama, minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology, said, "This is crisis management. We must consider the establishment of conditions and preparations so that even university hospitals can accept and treat seriously ill patients."

The Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning Thursday urging Japanese to postpone nonessential visits to Hong Kong and Guangdong Province, the areas most heavily hit by SARS.

This was preceded by a similar international advisory issued by the World Health Organization on Wednesday.

The ministry also issued additional, lower-level travel warnings later Friday, urging its nationals to be careful in traveling to Singapore, China's Shanxi Province, Taiwan, Macau, Hanoi and Toronto.