Big day for Hong Kong: WHO removes recommendation to avoid travel to Hong Kong.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/releases/2003/prwha4/en/

An excerpt from yesterday's press release:

23 May 2003 | GENEVA -- Effective today, the World Health Organization (WHO) is removing its recommendation that people should postpone all but essential travel to Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Guangdong province, China.

The recommendation to consider postponing all but essential travel to Hong Kong and Guangdong was issued on 2 April in order to minimize the international spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). WHO is changing this recommendation as the situation in these areas has now improved significantly.

[...]

In Hong Kong, the three-day average number of new cases has remained below five over the last six days and the pattern of the outbreak shows a sustained decline since the peak of new cases in late March. The total number of people who are still infectious (all of whom are in hospital) has fallen below 60, although there are other former SARS patients who are still convalescing or being treated for other conditions in hospital. All new cases in the past 20 days have occurred in people who were already identified as contacts of a person with SARS and under active surveillance by the local health authorities. There have been no recent reports of internationally exported cases from Hong Kong.

And on top of this good news, today, for the first time since the reporting of daily SARS cases began, there have been NO new cases. Yesterday, 2 new cases had been reported.