BEIJING (Reuters) - A prominent Chinese doctor said on Wednesday that China’s deadly hand, foot and mouth outbreak will not become another epidemic on the scale of the SARS virus, even as the numbers of reported cases mounted around Asia.

Hand, foot and mouth is a common childhood illness, but the current outbreak has led to 28 fatalities in China, mostly when linked with enterovirus 71 (EV71), which can cause a severe form of the disease, characterised by high fever, paralysis and meningitis.

China’s official Xinhua news agency put the number of cases of hand, foot and mouth disease at 15,799, up from about 12,000 cases reported on Tuesday, though it was not clear whether the jump was due to the disease’s spread or more thorough reporting.

“The situation is completely different from SARS,” Zhong Nanshan, a Chinese expert on respiratory diseases, said in an article posted on the government Web site of southern Guangdong province, where SARS was discovered in 2002.

“At present, the disease has already been diagnosed and there is proper prevention, so it will not evolve into a SARS-like epidemic.”

China initially covered up the outbreak of SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, which led to the sacking of the health minister and Beijing’s mayor.

Hand, foot and mouth disease is also making the rounds of other parts of Asia, with Singapore reporting a 75 percent surge in hand, food and mouth cases to 10,490 this year compared with last year, while Vietnam’s health ministry said the country had about 3,000 cases in the first four months of the year, more than the total number of reported cases for 2007.

Ten children had died from the disease in Vietnam.

In Japan, the number of cases has held steady from the previous year, a Health Ministry official said. Japan’s last deadly EV71 outbreak was in 2000, when there were three fatalities reported out of some 200,000 cases.

Hand, foot and mouth disease, which is characterised by fever, sores in the mouth and a rash with blisters — is a common illness among infants and children but which is usually not fatal, according to the U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases.

There is no vaccine or antiviral agent available to treat or prevent EV71. Enteroviruses spread mostly through contact with infected blisters or faeces and can cause high fever, paralysis and swelling of the brain.

LATEST CHINA DEATHS

A two-year-old girl in the central province of Hunan and a three-year-old boy in the south-western region of Guangxi have become the latest to die of the EV71 strain, Xinhua reported. They were the first deaths reported in those areas.

China’s outbreak has centred on Fuyang, in the poor, eastern province of Anhui, but Xinhua said the city had seen no fatalities for the past five days, suggesting the situation there was stabilising.

However, health officials say the disease’s high season is usually June and July and caution that it has yet to peak.

The China Daily has blamed the hand, foot and mouth crisis on a “delayed reaction” by Fuyang authorities, and on Wednesday it reported that the Anhui government had punished 10 doctors for malpractice relating to the outbreak.

In one of the cases, two doctors were given demerits for delaying the transfer of a patient to a larger, county hospital after he was found to be suffering a high fever.

In another, a doctor was fined for giving 17 children an injection he claimed could prevent EV71.

In Beijing, host city of the August Olympics, two kindergartens were suspended after children showed symptoms of hand, foot and mouth, but the Beijing News reported that lab tests had not yet confirmed whether it was the EV71 strain.

At least one international school in Beijing has sent out a notice regarding the outbreak, warning parents to watch for signs of tiredness, fever and blisters and saying that in line with usual practice those with fever should be kept at home.

(Additional reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam in Hanoi, Daryl Loo in Singapore and Risa Maeda in Tokyo; Editing by Nick Macfie and Valerie Lee)