The Chinese leadership has sacked two senior officials and cancelled May Day holidays following international criticism of it's handling of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
It also came as Hong Kong announced seven new deaths from the disease, which has now killed nearly 200 worldwide.
In a statement today the Chinese health ministry said there were 346 confirmed cases and 402 suspected cases in Beijing alone, and that 18 people had died from SARS in the capital. The number of cases in Beijing is nine times higher than the previous offical figure of 44 cases and four deaths.
The nationwide death toll from SARS has been raised to 79 with 1,814 confirmed cases of the illness. Shortly after the statement state media reported that Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing mayor Meng Xuenong were removed from senior positions in the Communist Party, a formal step which will almost certainly see them fired from their government posts.
And in an attempt to prevent the further spread of the disease, the authorities cancelled the week-long May Day holidays when hundreds of millions of people journey across the vast country to visit relatives.
There is no cure, vaccine or diagnostic test for the illness, and China's cooperation was seen as vital to containing and ultimately controlling the epidemic, which has devastated business and travel in Asia.
Vice Health Minister Gao Qiang - standing in for Zhang who failed to show up-- told a press conference that a team had been sent to every hospital in Beijing to find out the real number of SARS cases. However the new transparency only refers to Beijing, and the authorities gave no indication whether investigations were going on in other areas of China where SARS cases have been dribbling in day by day.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) welcomed China's new attitude Sunday, but expressed concern that many poor and rural areas with only basic medical facilities were not facing the same scrutiny.
"We are very pleased," Jeff McFarland, a member of the WHO team of experts probing the disease in the Chinese capital, told journalists.
"But of course it is a concern for everyone, everywhere that the WHO has not visited the rural areas."
Some 4,000 confirmed or suspected cases of SARS have now been recorded in around 30 countries, but the vast majority are in mainland China and the former British colony of Hong Kong, which is battling an alarming rise in deaths.
AFP