Fears about the rapid spread of an intestinal virus that has killed 26 young children reached the Chinese capital today, as it emerged that doctors have recorded almost 1,500 cases of hand, foot and mouth disease in Beijing.

The nationwide tally leapt to 11,905 today after the government ordered all local health officials to notify it of cases. More than half are in Fuyang City, in eastern Anhui province, where 22 of the victims died after becoming infected with Enterovirus 71. The virus has caused sporadic outbreaks of the disease in the Asia-Pacific region since 1997.

Hand, foot and mouth does not normally kill children, but in its severest forms can lead to complications including heart and respiratory problems and meningitis. It is most easily spread through contact with infected blisters or faeces.

The Beijing News reported today that the city has had 1,482 cases of hand, foot and mouth. It is not yet clear if they involved the EV71 strain or another virus.

Staff at a children's hospital told the Guardian they were treating "many" cases of the disease, but declined to give further details.

One mother said she would avoid taking her child to crowded places such as

markets and parks and would disinfect his bottles daily.

But Belle Zhao, whose son is eight months old, added: "They think it's not as frightening as Sars [the disease which killed almost 350 people in China

in 2002-3]."

The city's Centre for Disease Control has advised that infected children should be isolated at home, and that any class with more than three infected children should be suspended.

Today the state news agency Xinhua reported that authorities in Anhui had punished 10 doctors and officials for mishandling the outbreak. Two doctors were criticised for delaying moving a patient to a larger hospital, while others were fined for illegally injecting immune globulin into children, claiming it could prevent EV71 - for which there is no vaccine.

Five county-level officials were reprimanded for failing to inform the public of the problem.

The official media has attacked the authorities in Anhui for not announcing the outbreak until weeks after it began.

This week the World Health Organisation said the delay was caused by the difficulty of diagnosing the disease, as many victims did not have the usual symptoms.

The fatality rate has dropped dramatically, but the rapid spread of the illness is still causing concern and experts believe numbers will not peak until later this month or even next, when the disease is normally at its height.

"The fact that the current outbreak in China continues, with so many cases and deaths, is worrying," said Professor Tom Solomon of Liverpool University, who is researching EV71 outbreaks in Asia.

He said it was unclear why some patients died, but that it probably related to the severity of the virus as well as their immune response and how late they arrived at hospital.

Solomon said the virus was not a major problem when it was first recognized

in California in the 1960s.

He added: "In 1997 the virus caused a large unexpected outbreak of hand,

foot and mouth disease in Sarawak, with many fatalities. Since then the

virus has plagued the Asia-Pacific region with outbreaks most years. An

outbreak in Taiwan in 1998 was estimated to affect 1.5 million people.

"We don't know why the virus has suddenly started causing these outbreaks,

or whether they will spread beyond Asia. It probably relates to the virus's

fast rate of evolution, and the emergence of new genetic subtypes."

 Additional research by Alice Xin-Liu