SARS: Dwindling SARS numbers across Asia raised hopes that the deadly virus was on the wane yesterday, but optimism was tempered as a number of new cases in Canada raised the possibility of a global resurgence.
As life began returning to normal in Beijing and Hong Kong, Canadian health officials were investigating a suspected new infection cluster in Toronto, where three new deaths brought the total to 27.
Authorities in Toronto have asked more than 800 people to enter quarantine in an effort to control the fresh outbreak, which surfaced 12 days after the World Health Organisation (WHO) took the city off its danger list.
Last Friday the WHO lifted an advisory against travel to Hong Kong and southern China's Guangdong province, where SARS is believed to have originated in November.
Only two new infections have been reported in Hong Kong since the advisory was removed, prompting authorities to draft plans to revitalise its badly-hit tourism and business sectors.
In China, which has a nationwide SARS death toll of 317, half in Beijing, authorities claimed the disease was largely contained to the capital as falling infection rates eased fears of a countrywide mass infection.
China reported just eight new SARS cases and two more deaths yesterday, the lowest number since the government began publishing daily figures on April 20th.
The new low was welcomed by the WHO, which warned that the disease was still "ticking over in the background".
"There is no way you can predict when it will resurface," said WHO's spokesman in China, Mr Bob Dietz. "The figures are down, but again we have to be cautious."
Meanwhile, hopes of a medical solution were raised by the discovery that SARS antibodies were discovered in southern Chinese traders who sold wild animals, which are believed to have been the source of the disease.