WHO Extends SARS Travel Warning to Taiwan
Tibet Bureau Geneva (AP), 8 May 2003: The World Health Organization on Thursday extended a SARS travel warning to Taiwan and to two more Chinese provinces.
“WHO is now recommending as a measure of precaution that people planning to
travel to Tianjin and Inner Mongolia provinces of China and Taipei in Taiwan
… consider postponing all but essential travel,” said a statement by the
U.N. agency.
The agency has already issued travel warnings for Hong Kong, Beijing and
China’s Guangdong and Shanxi provinces.
The WHO lifted a similar warning on nonessential travel to Toronto on April
30 after deciding the disease had been sufficiently contained by health
authorities in the Canadian city.
WHO said it would likewise regularly reassess whether to change its travel
advice for the other areas.
It said it had “carefully reviewed” the information about the SARS outbreaks
in Tianjin, Inner Mongolia and Taipei.
“The travel advice is based on a consideration of the magnitude of the
outbreaks in these regions, including both the number of prevalent cases and
the daily number of new cases.”
WHO said the extent of “potential spread” was also taken into consideration.
WHO said so far there are more than 7,000 SARS cases in 29 countries on five
continents and that much of it was spread “along the routes of international
air travel.”
It said precautionary measures helped reduce the impact of SARS and
contained the disease in an early stage.
“National authorities have heightened surveillance for suspect and probable
cases,” WHO said. “In many countries, prompt detection and isolation of
initial cases have prevented further transmission altogether or held
additional cases to a very small number.”