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SARS travel warning lifted for more of China
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- The World Health Organization has dropped SARS-related travel advisories for the Chinese city of Tianjin and the provinces of Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Hebei in northern China, W.H.O. officials in Beijing said Friday. The news followed a day of intense meetings between Chinese health officials and W.H.O.'s chief SARS expert, Dr. David Heymann, who said Thursday he was satisfied with China's efforts to stem the spread of the disease. "We've seen that there has been a massive effort to mobilize 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," Heymann said during a joint news conference with the Chinese after their meetings Thursday. Tianjin and the three provinces remain listed as "SARS-affected areas," but W.H.O. officials said that the efforts to contain the disease have been efficient and the area no longer poses a significant risk to travelers. Beijing and Taiwan remain under travel advisories. W.H.O. had previously lifted travel advisories for Hong Kong and the provinces of Jilin and Guangdong. The organization also removed Guangdong, Hebei, Hubei, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Tianjin from its list of areas with new cases reported within the past 20 days -- twice the usual incubation period. That change means that W.H.O. no longer recommends that those areas screen all departing international passengers. The screening recommendation remains valid for Beijing, Hong Kong and Taiwan in China, and Toronto in Canada. Severe acute respiratory syndrome was first detected in China late last year. Chinese officials came under fire for a seeming reluctance to identify the disease and coordinate control efforts. Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong were fired in April for having seriously underreported the number of SARS cases to that point. Heymann and his team said Friday that they are still concerned China's surveillance system is not adequate enough to place to detect a resurgence of cases, that there are some delays in reporting new information and that the definitions of what constitutes a case of SARS vary countrywide. The team also reported concerns about cases with no known source of exposure. As of Friday, China had reported 5,327 cases of SARS, 343 of them resulting in death, according to the W.H.O. Worldwide, 8,454 cases have ended with 792 deaths. CNN Bureau Chief Jamie FlorCruz contributed to this report.
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