Students and faculty in all of the University’s twelve schools may no longer use any Harvard money to study and travel in areas affected by SARS—including several east Asian nations and Toronto, Canada—according to University announcement released yesterday.

According to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control, Hong Kong and mainland China, Singapore, Vietnam and Toronto, Canada have been affected by the rapid spread of the mysterious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, more commonly know as SARS.

While the University had strongly warned against travel to countries for which the World Health Organization (WHO) had issued travel advisories, this is the first time it has announced a policy expressly forbidding the use of funding for nearly all travel to these areas, according to University spokesperson Joe Wrinn.

But the rapidly changing pool of information about the epidemic means that the travel moratorium could be lifted at any time, if the incidence of new cases or fatality rates decline, said David S. Rosenthal ’59, director of Harvard University Health Services (UHS).

“We’ve been a little bit more firm with our decision today, but this could change in a week,” Rosenthal said.

Concerns about the contagiousness of the disease also motivated the decision to impose the moratorium on University-sponsored travel, Rosenthal said.

“We live in a very close community and infections can spread very rapidly,” Rosenthal said.

University President Lawrence H. Summers agreed in an interview Wednesday that the possibility of cases infecting others within the school was a major concern.

“The important thing to think about in connection with SARS is not the current numbers but the potential for exponential expansion in the number of people affected,” Summers said.

The effort to strongly deter travel to affected areas was drawn from a concern not only about individual travelers, but about the community at large, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby wrote in a letter to colleagues yesterday.

“Individual travelers risk their own infection, of course, but they can also spread the disease to the wider population...We must take precautions to protect our public health,” Kirby wrote.

Although students and faculty routinely participate in global travel, exposing themselves to foreign diseases that are uncommon or eradicated in the U.S., the situation with SARS necessitates greater caution because of the confusion and lack of information surrounding the disease, Wrinn said.

“The mystery behind the disease is the key thing now,” Wrinn said. “It’s a moving target, and hopefully we will find out more information and be able to make adjustments soon.”

The exact method of transmission of SARS is currently unknown, but the WHO website says it may be transmitted through secretions or exhaled droplets of saliva in the air.

There is currently no vaccine for SARS, and its similarity to other common sicknesses such as influenza, combined with a long incubation period of ten days make it difficult to identify and diagnose, Harvard Medical School Professor Kenneth McIntosh ’58 said in an interview earlier this month.