Sars outbreak is peaking, says WHO

The world appears to be winning the war against Sars, the World Health Organisation announced yesterday, though China's outbreak is still cause for major concern.

The organisation declared Vietnam to be the first country officially to have contained the virus. Its impact has also peaked in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada, the three countries affected after China, the WHO said.

But WHO's chief of communicable diseases, David Heymann, said yesterday that the global battle was far from over. "China will make or break this outbreak," he said in Bangkok on the eve of an emergency East Asian leaders' summit on the severe acute respiratory syndrome that, as of yesterday, has killed at least 333 people and infected more than 5,000.

"We do believe the Chinese are reporting what they know. The problem is China doesn't know a lot of what's occurring in some of the provinces, because health care is decentralised." China reported 203 new Sars cases yesterday, half in the capital Beijing, and eight deaths.

Dr Heymann admitted that the WHO was still uncertain how the outbreak started, and how it could properly be diagnosed or treated, and said that why some countries became badly infected, and others escaped unscathed, appeared largely down to luck. "We're still learning," he said. "We're building the ship as it sails."

Vietnam got a clean bill of health after no new cases were reported for 20 days, twice the maximum incubation, and its statistics were verified by WHO experts. The daily number of new cases is also starting to decline in Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada.

China, where Sars is thought to have originated in November, is so far a completely different situation. The WHO admits that it has no firm idea as to the scale of the China crisis or how it is spreading.

"Our major concern is that, if this disease arrives in the western provinces, where health care is less available than in other parts of China, it may do considerable damage," Dr Heymann said.

Beijing, where 8,000 people are quarantined, has become a virtual ghost city in recent days, while the government has been racing to finish building what it calls a hospital but which looks more like an isolation camp for Sars victims.

Taiwan yesterday began quarantining for 10 days all people arriving from Sars affected countries.

In the last week China has become much more transparent in its reporting of cases and more draconian in stamping out the spread. Its new premier, Wen Jiabao, is attending the Sars summit in Bangkok today, along with Hong Kong's chief executive, Tung Chee-Hwa.

The heads of government are expected to endorse and perhaps expand on the recommendations made by their health ministers on Saturday: screening all departing passengers, and banning any traveller showing Sars symptoms; putting all suspects under surveillance; making all travellers from infected countries complete health declarations; and improving facilities on planes and ships to deal with Sars cases should they arise.

Passengers flying to Britain from Sars areas could also be screened, the health secretary, Alan Milburn, announced yesterday. Specific flights could be checked and passengers asked to declare they have had no contact with the disease, he told the Commons. But identifying cases was "looking for a needle in a haystack."