SARS patrols out in Beijing

BEIJING - The worst-hit district of China's capital has sent thousands of investigators on a hunt for SARS victims as the World Health Organisation said the outbreak had yet to peak there.

The army of investigators was the latest sign of China's desperate fight to contain Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, a disease which has triggered riots by villagers furious that people from infected areas have been put among them.

In Haidian, the Beijing district with the most SARS cases, some 30,000 investigators inspected businesses, neighbourhoods and work sites, district official Zhou Liangluo told reporters.

Households in the district of 2.2 million people have been given a thermometer and emergency contact numbers. Offices and businesses must install temperature-monitoring systems.

Motorola, the world's second biggest mobile phone maker and one of the biggest foreign investors in China, meanwhile, closed its Beijing headquarters until Monday after a staff member there caught the disease.

"We have not seen a peak in China yet. We still have a considerable size of outbreak in Hong Kong," UN health chief Gro Harlem Brundtland said in Brussels, adding that it was too early to say whether the outbreak was receding worldwide.

Brundtland met European Union Health Commissioner David Byrne before an emergency meeting of EU health ministers on Tuesday to discuss how to prevent SARS spreading to Europe.

The ministers agreed to back administrative screening of travellers on arrival from infected countries, such as questionnaires distributed to passengers.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Monday the crisis was "grave", with the disease striking hardest in Beijing, where 1,960 cases have now been confirmed.

China's Health Ministry announced 138 new cases of SARS on Tuesday and reported eight more deaths, taking the toll to 214.

The flu-like disease has infected 4,409 people across China. Half of the deaths, 107 out of 214, have occurred in Beijing.

Nearly 7,000 people have been infected worldwide.

Hong Kong said on Tuesday the virus had killed six more people and infected a further nine. The death toll there is 193.

Elsewhere, there were signs the disease, which has caused panic and hurt the travel industry, may be coming under control.

The Philippines reported seven more cases, taking its total to 10, but said they were all on their way to recovery.

Singapore reported its first case in three days as its death toll rose to 27. The tourism board said a damaging drop in visitor arrivals due to SARS had probably bottomed out after a record plunge of 67 per cent in April from a year earlier.

But the government said growth in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia remained hostage to the spread of SARS in China.

Thailand said health ministers from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which includes China and the United States, would meet in Bangkok on June 28 to assess efforts to combat SARS and revive business confidence.

In China, Motorola told about 1,000 employees to work from home until next Monday after 27 workers had close contact with the infected employee, spokeswoman Mary Lamb told Reuters.

Other foreign firms have closed offices or pulled employees out of China, reflecting a fear of the little-understood disease and a lack of confidence in China's ability to control it.

The University of California at Berkeley, a major US university with links to Asia, said it would bar hundreds of Asian students from summer classes because of SARS fears.

- REUTERS