The commissioner of security and public safety in Ontario is now considering using electronic bracelets to keep SARS patients from violating their quarantine orders.

The electronic tracking devices are sometimes used in the Ontario corrections system to keep tabs on criminals. Dr. James Young says he's looking at using the bracelets for SARS patients who are refusing to obey orders to quarantine themselves at home. About 15 people are under court order right now because they've been deemed a possible risk of spreading the illness.

Young says lawyers are examining the legality of the option.

"We're at a point where the critical thing that we have to do is get the co-operation of the community, even though it's a longer period of time and they're growing tired of doing this,'' Young said at a SARS briefing Wednesday.

This weekend, with both the Easter and Passover holidays being celebrated, it could prove to be a key point in the fight against SARS. Young warned that anyone with SARS-like symptoms should stay away from religious services and family gatherings to prevent further spread.

"We're at a weekend where traditionally there is a lot of activity. People are meeting. They're socializing. So that means we've got a whole lot of risk factors coming together at once and we've got a message that isn't very popular for any of us.

"We're asking a lot of people. But we're saying to them that we wouldn't be asking it if we didn't think this was the right message and a critical time."

"There can be no shortcuts and there can be no exceptions," Tony Clement, Ontario's health minister, said. "All of us must do our part."

Health officials have advised anyone who is feeling unwell, with muscular aches, headache, and a fever to stay home until they feel better -- even if they do not believe they have had exposure to any SARS cases.

The emergence of SARS in a Toronto Roman Catholic prayer group has resulted in a slew of restrictions just ahead of the church's holiest days.

Roman Catholic leaders have announced a number of changes for Easter celebrations to reduce the chance of person-to-person transmission of the disease including:

• not sipping wine from a shared chalice,
• signing peace with a nod instead of a handshake, and
• placing communion wafers in parishioners hands, not on their tongues.

The Anglican Diocese of Toronto at first told its churches they could continue using the common communion cup, saying in a memo to clergy that "the Eucharist is the central act of Christian worship instituted by Christ himself... We do not authorize moving to less frequent Eucharists or discontinuing the use of the common cup"

But later the Anglican diocese decided that priests will not share with parishioners the communal cup. Rev. Terence Finlay, Archbishop of Toronto, says priests will continue to consecrate both the bread and wine at every Eucharist. But he says parishioners will receive bread only, until further notice.

Some 500 members of a charismatic Roman Catholic group known as the BLD Covenant Community have also been told to quarantine themselves. The order came after 29 members of the group and two doctors who had treated them were diagnosed as probable or suspect SARS cases.

That outbreak has been traced to a visitation at funeral home on April 3 for a person who died of SARS. Health officials say several people who were later diagnosed with SARS attended the visitation and infected others.

Young says there are no unrelated cases of SARS that cannot be traced back to the original cases at Toronto's Scarborough Grace Hospital. But he says tracking cases backwards becomes more difficult.

The number of probable and suspect cases in Ontario rose to 249 Wednesday, from 244. So far, 13 people in the Toronto area have died after contracting SARS.

With reports from The Canadian Press