Liang Wannian, vice-director of the Beijing Health Bureau, said the current proportion of suspected cases that are turning into confirmed cases is now below 5 per cent, down from the previous level around 30 per cent in May.

Beijing's hospitals had four suspected SARS patients yesterday, down from nearly one hundred 10 days ago, according to figures released by the Ministry of Health.

Meanwhile, Liang predicted that the travel advisory imposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) against Beijing will possibly be lifted in about a week if no new cases arise in the capital.

It has been 20 days since Beijing hospitals received a clinically confirmed SARS case, aside from confirmed cases that have developed from suspected cases already in hospital, according to sources with the Beijing Joint Working Team for SARS Prevention and Treatment.

Liang explained the dramatic drop in number of SARS cases in Beijing recently in an exclusive interview with China Daily.

"Most of the newly-emerging suspected cases were excluded as few of them have had close contact with SARS patients, which is one of the musts to be diagnosed as a clinically confirmed SARS patient," Liang said. He said that because of the small amount of new clinically confirmed and suspected cases in Beijing, there was now only a small transmission base.

According to the diagnosis standard issued by the Ministry of Health, a person who does not have close contact with clinically or suspected SARS cases could still be diagnosed as a suspected case depending on his or her clinical symptoms, test results and chest X-rays.

But close contact with a SARS case, or history of travel or residing in an area with a recent transmission is a necessity to be considered a clinically confirmed SARS patient.

Talking about the suspected cases diagnosed before this month, Liang said the proportion of those turning out to be clinically confirmed is minute, as the majority of possible cases have already been ruled out as being SARS cases.

"In fact those patients suffered from pneumonia or other respiratory diseases, together with certain other diseases. So it takes a little longer to decide whether they are SARS patients or not," he said.

It took on average 7 to 14 days to see clinically if a suspected case was going to become a confirmed case or could be excluded.

Liang said although the authorities encouraged hospitals to diagnose more clinically confirmed patients to ensure greater caution, the number of suspected cases being confirmed stayed at a very low level.

In another development, Hong Kong-based newspaper Wen Wei Po reported that Vice-Premier Wu Yi had helped Taiwan Province get five seats at the WHO global conference on SARS, which opened on Tuesday in Malaysia.

(China Daily June 19, 2003)