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)