WHO says SARS outbreak is over, but fight should g
发布日期：2003-08-04

WHO says SARS outbreak is over, but fight should go on Fiona Fleck Geneva The World Health Organization said on 5 July that the global outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) had been contained, but it urged health authorities across the world not to be complacent, because the world was not yet free of the disease. WHO removed Taiwan, where the last SARS case was detected and the patient isolated on 15 June, from a list of areas of recent transmission that travellers are advised to avoid. WHO officials said the patient in Taiwan had passed two consecutive incubation periods of 10 days without passing on the disease, the WHO criterion defining the end of the outbreak. Since then no new cases have been reported. However, they warned that in the absence of a vaccine and a cure the possibility of seasonal recurrence of SARS could not be ruled out. It remains unclear whether patients without symptoms can infect other people, and scientists are still working on a diagnostic test to detect cases in the early stages. Without such a test the next flu season could trigger panic again. Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO