China's Health Ministry issued a nationwide alert Saturday calling for heightened efforts to control a virus that has caused the deaths of 22 children in one city and shows signs of spreading.

Health bureaus around the country must step up monitoring for hand, foot and mouth disease following a “relatively large” outbreak in the central city of Fuyang, the Health Ministry said in notices on its Web site.

The ministry warned that cases were more numerous this year than in recent years, and the peak for transmission would likely come in June and July.

The outbreak is another concern for China’s communist government as it gears up to welcome hundreds of thousands of foreigners for this summer’s Beijing Olympics.

It’s also an uncomfortable reminder of the SARS pneumonia outbreak in 2003, which Beijing tried to cover up but then adopted drastic measures to control.

Saturday’s warning was prompted by a jump in cases in Fuyang of Enterovirus 71, or EV-71, a type of hand, foot and mouth disease.

Up to Thursday night, 3,321 cases of EV-71 were reported in Fuyang, a fast-growing city in largely rural Anhui province. Besides the 22 deaths, 978 people remain hospitalized.