WHO lifts warnings on HK, Guangdong

GENEVA (AFP) — The World Health Organization (WHO) lifted yesterday its travel warning over SARS for non-essential travel to Hong Kong and China’s southern Guangdong province.

"WHO is changing this recommendation as the situation in these areas has now improved significantly," it said in a statement.

The warning was issued on April 2.

The Geneva-based UN health agency said it continued to recommend that all international passengers leaving Hong Kong and Guangdong be screened to ensure those suffering from SARS or who are contacts of SARS cases do not travel.

"We are changing the travel advice for Hong Kong and Guangdong effective Friday, 23 May," Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO’s outgoing director-general said in the statement.

"Guangdong was the first place in the world to have cases of SARS but I am pleased to note that due to the efforts of the local and national health authorities, with support from WHO, the outbreaks in Guangdong and in Hong Kong are being contained," she added.

In Hong Kong, the three-day average number of new cases has remained below five over the last six days, and the pattern of the SARS outbreak shows a "sustained decline" since the peak of new cases in late March, WHO said.

Less than 60 people, all of whom are in hospital, are still infectious, it said.

Other former SARS patients are still convalescing or being treated for other conditions in hospital.

All the new cases in the past 20 days have occurred in people who were already identified as contacts of a person with SARS, and there have been no recent reports of internationally exported cases from Hong Kong.

In Guangdong, the three-day average number of new cases has been below five for 11 days, and the number of SARS patients in hospital fell below 60 on May 20, the UN agency added.

WHO said it was maintaining its recommendation to put off all but essential travel to the Chinese areas of Beijing, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Taiwan and Tianjin.