WHO lifts travel advisory to China except Beijing

The World Health Organization (WHO) lifted SARS warnings against travel to China except Beijing on Friday, in a further sign the potentially fatal disease is being tamed.

But it kept up its call to avoid unnecessary trips to the Chinese capital and to Taiwan -- the only places in the world still subject to travel warnings -- because of lingering worries about SARS there.

And the UN health agency also expressed new concern about Toronto, the only spot outside Asia where SARS has killed, after a visitor from the US state of North Carolina caught it in Canada's business capital.

The WHO said it dropped the alert for the Chinese provinces of Hebei and Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and the city of Tianjin.

It also removed these and a number of other Chinese areas from the list of places where SARS was still feared to be spreading, a move tantamount to declaring them SARS-free.

"SARS is no longer a potential threat to international travellers to these regions," WHO said.

The WHO's top infectious disease expert has praised moves by China, where SARS is believed to have begun, to contain the respiratory disease which has killed some 790 people worldwide.

Despite the fact that Beijing, once the SARS capital of the world, had seen a dramatic decline in new cases, WHO said it needed to know more about the pattern of the disease there.

"In Beijing, we don't believe the situation is fully under control, and nor do the Chinese authorities," WHO spokesman Iain Simpson told a news conference.

After jumping from south China to Hong Kong and Vietnam in March, the disease, which is fatal in some 15 percent of cases, quickly spread by air travel to some 30 countries.

But new cases worldwide have dropped below 10 a day and WHO said on Thursday the global outbreak seemed to be ending.

However, the example of Toronto, where the disease erupted again in May after appearing to be under control, showed that health authorities could not drop their guard.

WHO said it had raised its level of vigilance for Toronto to "C" from "B" because the source of the new infection had not been identified, raising the risk of further contagion.