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World Health Officials Declare End to SARS Outbreak in China

The World Health Organization on Tuesday declared an end to a recent outbreak of SARS cases in China that apparently originated with a safety breach in the government's leading virology laboratory. But officials also cautioned that they still could not explain what caused the infections.

The announcement signals the conclusion of a small but worrisome outbreak that was disclosed last month after two graduate students working at the Institute of Virology at China's Centers for Disease Control became mysteriously infected with SARS.

''For all practical purposes, the outbreak is now contained,'' said Roy Wadia, a spokesman for the health organization's office in Beijing. ''We've seen no new cases for the last three weeks plus.''

Initial fears that SARS might spread into the general population proved unfounded. The disease was contracted by only nine people, the two graduate students and seven people who had come into close contact with them. Six recovered, but the mother of one of the students died last month. Two people remain hospitalized, one in critical condition.

Hundreds of others who had close contact with the nine patients have since been released from quarantine, though state media have reported that 28 employees of the institute remain under observation.

The lingering mystery is what caused the outbreak. The World Health Organization and the Chinese Ministry of Health have assigned teams to investigate the laboratory. International health officials have long worried that lab accidents could inadvertently spread the disease, as happened in Taiwan and Singapore.

The virology institute is China's main government testing center for SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, but the World Health Organization reported that the two lab researchers were not thought to have come into contact with the live virus. The situation is further muddled because the researchers were apparently not infected at the same time.

''It is conceivable that an exact answer may never be arrived at,'' the organization said in a statement about the cause of the outbreak.

Still, investigators remain concerned about procedures at the lab for handling SARS samples and expressed ''serious concerns'' about biosafety procedures. The laboratory is badly outdated. Before the outbreak, state media reported that construction of an updated virology center would begin in June.

Noting that laboratories around the world now store live SARS samples for testing and research, the health organization emphasized that safety is of paramount importance and reissued a list of recommendations and guidelines to prevent accidents.

This recent SARS outbreak never caused widespread panic in China. One of the laboratory researchers had traveled on at least three trains before she was placed in quarantine, prompting concerns that the disease might move into the general population. But it did not, as Chinese officials moved quickly to isolate people who had come into close contact with the SARS patients.

SARS first emerged in southern China in late 2002, quickly spreading around the world and infecting more than 8,000 people. Nearly 800 died.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 5 of the National edition with the headline: World Health Officials Declare End to SARS Outbreak in China. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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