SARS on the wane

Beijing

Beijing schools began to reopen this week as the number of new cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome leveled off in the city that has been hit hardest by the disease. Aggressive quarantines have succeeded in isolating the virus that causes SARS, and the World Health Organization said that outside of China and Taiwan, the SARS epidemic was over. “The measures are working,” said the WHO’s Michael J. Ryan. While China still faces “a difficult situation” because it has the most people infected, he said, “it’s not any more complex than it is in the rest of the world.” Ryan said China should see a major decline in new cases if it continues to quarantine patients and track their contacts.

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