Sunday, September 6, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
HEALTH: SARS Epidemic Wanes in China, Few New Cases Worldwide
Gustavo Capdevila
- International and local health officials are breathing a cautious sigh of relief because the SARS situation has improved so dramatically in China, where the epidemic began some seven months ago before expanding to other parts of the world.
Given the current panorama of the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) decided Friday to eliminate its recommendations against non-essential travel to some of the regions of China that had been hard hit by SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).
The WHO announcement includes areas of China where there have been no reports of recent local infections: Guangdong, Hebei, Hubei, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Tianjin.
WHO spokesman Iain Simpson said the move is the result of the recent visit to Beijing by the United Nations health agency’s executive director for communicable diseases, David Heymann.
The WHO official held "long and extensive" meetings earlier this week with Chinese Health Minister Gao Qiang.
Heymann and Qiang told a press conference Thursday that atypical pneumonia, as SARS is also known, is under control in China.
The relations between the Chinese government health officials and the WHO authorities warmed during the past few weeks after a cold period caused by Beijing’s apparent foot-dragging in providing reliable data about the spread of the disease in the country..
Heymann, having returned to Geneva, presented WHO executives Friday with the information he received in Beijing about the status of the disease in each of the specific areas of China where "recent local transmission of SARS" had been reported.
The reports show that in many of these areas more than 20 days have gone by with no new cases appearing. The incubation period for atypical pneumonia is around 10 days.
"Local transmission has completely stopped in many areas," said spokesman Simpson. "This is extremely positive news and it shows that SARS has been brought under control in most parts of China."
China announced that there were no new cases of SARS reported Friday. Since the epidemic began, the number of cases in China shot to 5,327, and 343 people died of the disease.
Heymann recognised that in China "there has been a massive effort to mobilise the population both in urban and rural areas across the country, encouraging people to monitor themselves for fever and to ensure that SARS cases are quickly identified, isolated and treated."
But the WHO official says the world community "must continue vigilance. Not just in China, but everywhere," even though there are areas where SARS appears to have totally disappeared.
The latest WHO bulletin on the SARS epidemic states that for Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Canadian city of Toronto, the recommendation remains in place that all international travellers departing from those cities should be screened for the disease.
Hong Kong tallies 1,755 cases of atypical pneumonia, with 293 deaths. But no new cases have appeared in the past five days.
The screening procedures recommended by the WHO – established Mar. 27 when the epidemic was at its height – is intended to ensure that no one with the disease or who has had contact with anyone diagnosed with SARS becomes a vector for spreading the disease internationally.
Meanwhile, recommendations against non-essential travel to Beijing and Taiwan remain in place.
Taiwan announced Friday that another person there had died from the disease, putting its SARS death toll at 81, out of 693 cases.
"There is also a suspected case in Brazil which is believed to been exported from Taiwan," said spokesman Simpson.
The WHO announces that director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland will travel to Malaysia to participate in the Global Conference on SARS – a review of scientific findings and assessment of public health measures – to take place Jun.17-18 in Kuala Lumpur. Brundtland and Heymann are to address the closing session of the meeting.
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