Five Republican senators led by Marco Rubio on Friday asked President Joe Biden's administration to ban travel between the United States and China after a spike in Chinese respiratory illness cases.

"We should immediately restrict travel between the United States and [China] until we know more about the dangers posed by this new illness," said the letter signed by Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The rise in cases became a global issue last week when the World Health Organization asked China for more information, citing a report on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children by the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Chizu Nomiyama)