A senior expert on infectious diseases from the World Health
Organization (WHO) will start a two-day visit to Beijing Wednesday
to investigate the current state of the SARS outbreak in the
Chinese capital.
His visit is to see whether it is appropriate to lift the WHO
travel warning on Beijing.
David Heymann, the WHO executive director for communicable
diseases, will meet officials and experts from the Ministry of
Health this morning.
He
will also meet WHO experts based in China, health ministry
officials said.
His assessment would affect how soon the WHO lifts the travel
advisory for Beijing and four areas bordering it -- Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region, Hebei and Shanxi provinces and Tianjin
Municipality, Bob Dietz, the media officer of WHO office in China,
said Tuesday.
For the first time since the outbreak of the disease last November,
the Chinese mainland reported no new cases or new suspected cases
of the flu-like disease in the 24 hours until 10 am Tuesday.
The Ministry of Health reported three new deaths from the disease
on the Chinese mainland Tuesday. Of the three new deaths, two were
reported in Beijing, and one in North China's Shanxi province.
According to the ministry, 108 SARS patients were discharged from
hospital upon recovery in the same 24-hour period.
Of
the discharged SARS patients, 94 were in Beijing. The remainder
were seven in Inner Mongolia, six in Shanxi and one in Hebei.
The country also ruled out 116 suspect SARS cases in that period --
100 in Beijing, seven each in Inner Mongolia and Jiangsu, one each
in Shanxi and Anhui.
According to the standards of the World Health Organization, the
number of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities with
recent local SARS transmission on the Chinese mainland still stood
at seven as of 10 am Tuesday.
Of
them, Shanghai, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia have had no new clinically
diagnosed cases for over 15 consecutive days; Hebei has reported no
new clinically diagnosed case for over 10 consecutive days; Beijing
and Liaoning have had no new clinically diagnosed cases for seven
consecutive days.
The cumulative number of SARS cases on the Chinese mainland was
5,328 Tuesday, while the number of patients discharged from
hospital hit 4,294 and the death toll was 343, according to the
ministry.
(China Daily June 11, 2003)