The World Health Organization (WHO) today cast doubt on China's account of the extent of SARS outbreak there after the country reported a sharp decline in its caseload.
"We are concerned by how these cases are being counted," WHO spokesman Mr Iain Simpson said.
China today reported three new cases of the pneumonia-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and no new deaths over the past 24 hours.
It also marked the eighth-straight day Chinese authorities had recorded fewer than 10 new cases, one of the criteria used by the WHO to assess the gravity of an outbreak of the virus in a country.
"We are getting more co-operation that we had in the beginning from China but it is not really clear to us how these numbers have been counted," Mr Simpson said, highlighting scepticism over the sudden drop in cases in the capital, Beijing, in particular.
Mr Simpson said the team had "much more faith" in the data in the southern province of Guangdong, where the outbreak is belived to have started late last year.
"We had a team there that verified the numbers and also it looked more realistic to us because the numbers came down very slowly in Guangdong," he added.
WHO's concern focuses on the speed of the decline in SARS elsewhere in China, with the total number of cases falling from the "high twenties to thirties each day down to just a handful" at the end of May, according to Mr Simpson.
"It may just be that that is very good news, but we do have questions about it," he said.
AFP