Vice-Premier Wu Yi Monday called on people in North China, a region hard-hit by the SARS outbreak, not to relax their vigilance despite the remarkable achievements made in controlling the disease.

She was speaking at a regional meeting in Beijing covering all of North China -- Beijing and Tianjin municipalities, Hebei and Shanxi provinces and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Wu said fighting the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and developing the country's economy would continue to be the top priorities of the central government.

Prevention work used under the emergency conditions should continue to be used after SARS is under control, she said. Monitoring work should be strengthened, she added.

Wu said close attention should be paid to SARS prevention and control work in rural areas and urged officials to solve farmers' problems.

The Ministry of Health said there were no new confirmed SARS cases on the Chinese mainland in the 24 hours up to 10 am Monday but there was one death in South China's Guangdong Province.

According to the ministry, 129 SARS patients were discharged from hospital upon recovery in the same 24-hour period.

Of the discharged SARS patients, 110 were in Beijing. There were eight in Inner Mongolia, six in Shanxi, three in Northeast China's Jilin Province, and one each in Hebei and South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

There was one new suspected SARS case in Guangdong.

The authorities also declared that 106 suspected SARS patients did not have the virus. There were 99 such cases in Beijing, two each in Inner Mongolia and Jilin, and one each in Guangdong, East China's Jiangsu Province and Northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

In another development, researchers with the Key Science and Technology Group under the National Task Force for SARS Prevention and Control announced Monday in Beijing that the combination of traditional Chinese medical methods and Western medical treatment used to fight SARS has been proven to be scientific and successful.

Their conclusion was based on clinical studies from 562 SARS patients in Beijing You'an Hospital, Xiyuan Hospital, People's Liberation Army Hospital No 302 and eight other hospitals in Beijing.

Under the group's co-ordination, more than 400 medical workers have been involved in curing the SARS patients through a combination of Western and traditional Chinese medical methods. After a month of observation from early last month to Friday last week, researchers completed analyses on 222 patients' chest X-rays, the saturation level of oxygen in the blood and other physical indices. Studies on the remaining 340 patients will be completed by the end of this month. The scientists compared the 222 patients with another 200 patients who were treated solely with Western methods.



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