Officials from the University of California Berkeley yesterday lifted a ban on students from SARS-affected areas of Asia who already have enrolled in summer school classes.

The policy reversal comes amid charges that the school overreacted to a potential threat from the flu-like illness when it banned all summer school students from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China earlier this month.

UC Berkeley officials were in Hong Kong, where severe acute respiratory syndrome has killed 243 people, to talk with health authorities when they made the announcement.

At a news conference, UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor Donald McQuade said the school will welcome 124 students – the majority from Taiwan, with smaller numbers from Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China – who already have enrolled in summer school English language classes.

University officials in the San Francisco Bay Area said yesterday that the school had not yet decided what to do with prospective applicants. In a typical year, 500 to 600 students enroll in classes, which run on a staggered scheduled and start as late as August.

"Our goal is to have as many as we can," university spokesman George Strait said yesterday.

"We're still trying to see how many resources we have to handle" potentially infected new students, Strait said. "We don't know how many applications we're actually going to get."

University officials said they were able to withdraw the ban after identifying potential isolation areas on campus. They have said their original decision was a prudent step based on detailed guidelines issued by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The illness has killed 625 people, primarily in mainland China and Hong Kong. More than 7,800 people around the world have been sickened.

UC Berkeley's blanket ban went further than other U.S. universities, which generally have asked their own students and faculty not to travel to Asia, rather than banning students from the region. Critics said the original UC Berkeley policy was discriminatory and too broad.

While UC Berkeley told students from Asia to come without restrictions, officials at the EF International Language School in Santa Barbara told county health authorities they would be quarantining 19 students and a chaperone from southern China.

The students have no symptoms of the disease, but school officials said they were imposing the 10-day quarantine when they arrive to quell public concerns, the Santa Barbara News-Press reported yesterday.