News & Perspective

June 16, 2003 (CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has canceled its travel warnings for several areas of China in response to the steady waning of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) there.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today lifted its recommendation against travel to Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province, signaling that the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak is declining in its original strongholds.

Both places have fewer than 60 patients who are still infectious, and the average number of new cases per day has hovered at less than five in recent days, WHO officials said in a news release.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today expressed closely guarded optimism that SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) can be contained.

"Experiences in a growing number of countries indicate that the disease can be contained, thus supporting WHO's overall objective: to prevent SARS from becoming widely established as another new disease in humans," the organization said in its online update.

(CIDRAP News) – Just five "super spreaders" infected most of the people who contracted SARS in Singapore, but most of those infected did not spread the disease to anyone else, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – The worldwide cumulative case count for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) topped 6,000 today with the addition of 207 new cases, including 176 in China, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Twenty-six more SARS deaths were reported, bringing the global total to 417.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today warned against unnecessary travel to Toronto, Beijing, and China's Shanxi Province because of the risk of contracting SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

The warning extends the WHO's Apr 2 advisory against nonessential travel to China's Guangdong Province and Hong Kong, the birthplace and epicenter of the SARS epidemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Genetic sequencing of the virus believed to cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—an achievement announced by Canadian and US scientists in the past few days—has set the stage for improving diagnostic tests and developing treatments and vaccines for the disease, according to health officials.