The World Health Organisation said on Saturday the global outbreak
of the respiratory illness SARS had been contained as it removed
Taiwan from its list of areas with recent local transmission of the
disease.
"We do not mark the end of SARS today, but we observe a milestone
-- the global SARS outbreak has been contained," WHO
Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland said in a statement.
The announcement came after Taiwan, the last area on the list, had
gone the mandatory 20 days or twice the normal incubation period
without reporting a new case of the potentially fatal respiratory
sickness.
However, the WHO warned countries they must remain vigilant to the
re-emergence of the disease for which there is no simple treatment
and which has killed more than 800 people worldwide since it
appeared in southern China last November.
(China Daily July 5, 2003)