World Health Organization says the worst is over in the battle against SARS after an unprecedented battle worldwide has helped contain the disease.

The disease has killed about 800 people, with more than 8,000 reported cases and experts still advise vigilance in some regions.

"We have seen SARS virus stopped dead in its tracks," the WHO director-general, Gro Harlem Brundtland said Tuesday at a global conference in Malaysia.

More than 1,000 international researchers, officials and health experts gathered in Kuala Lumpur to discuss lessons learned from the outbreak.

A month-old travel advisory on China's Taiwan was lifted by the WHO at the conference, effective immediately. The recommendation that people should postpone all but essential travel to Taiwan was removed on Tuesday, nearly a month after it was imposed. Taiwan was the third-hardest hit area after the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, with 83 people killed by the virus and 698 infected.

The WHO said it was lifting the travel warning as the situation had "improved significantly," with a steep drop in the number of new cases each day.

For the first time since November, neither Taiwan, Hong Kong, nor the mainland reported any new cases on Monday. No new cases were also reported Tuesday.

While the WHO has already removed its travel advisory against Hong Kong, an official from the UN agency says the territory could be removed from its list of SARS-infected areas as early as next week.

Beijing is now the last remaining city subject to the WHO's advisory instructing travelers to consider postponing all but essential travel to the area.

More than 1,000 scientists and clinicians gathered in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur for the first major conference on the deadly SARS epidemic. During the two-day meeting, they will examine how hard-hit regions responded to the outbreak, review scientific findings and talk about control strategies for a disease that has so far killed 799 people and infected 8,460.
The meeting in Kuala Lumpur will also look to see whether SARS can be eradicated and try to raise coordination between countries in case SARS recurs or there is an outbreak of other communicable diseases.

From the outset of the disease in November, the WHO points to an unprecedented high-level of scientific collaboration which led to the identification of the coronavirus within a month.

"However, many fundamental scientific questions remain," a WHO statement says.

Because there is still no reliable diagnostic test for the disease and no cure, authorities are relying on centuries-old measures of isolation, quarantine, and travel restrictions to contain SARS.

The WHO also points to serious deficiencies in surveillance and control systems in a number of locations -- many countries do not have a centralized information clearing house like the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- and warn that SARS still remains a dangerous disease.

The WHO says it is clear that certain steps have proven effective in tracing, identifying, and isolating those who either have the disease or have come into contact with someone who does.

Countries that have taken the most thorough and rigorous steps, such as Singapore and Vietnam, have been those that have managed the disease more quickly than others, the WHO says.

The conference papers are expected to go into detail on the various treatments for SARS, prevention, the handling of patients, and how to communicate to a global audience ways to guard against the disease.

The papers may also prove to be of interest in any studies examining the link between animals and humans in SARS transmission. There is great suspicion the virus may have jumped from animals in southern China late last year to humans, thus sparking the outbreak.