Beijing: A senior Chinese health official on May 2 warned Beijing residents that the killer epidemic SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has not yet been contained in the city of nearly 14 million people and they could expect a 10-day period of "upsurge" in SARS cases.

"In the past 10 days, the epidemic in Beijing has witnessed a high plateau. As an epidemiologist, my personal judgement is that the present high plateau of number of cases in Beijing will continue over a period of time," the Deputy Director of Beijing Health Bureau, Liang Wannian, said in Beijing.

"However, the situation in Beijing is stable and the upward trend has been effectively checked in terms of number of SARS patients," Liang, also a member of Beijing's task force on SARS, said in nationally- televised press conference amid rising number of SARS infections and deaths in China, the worst-hit nation.

"According to the law of infections of epidemics, especially for those respiratory infectious diseases, I believe that in the case of SARS, the number of patients will drop in future, but is hard to say when the number will drop because we don't know a lot about this disease," he acknowledged.

While the Chinese mainland on May 1 reported 187 new cases of SARS, the nation's capital accounted for 122 of them, showing the intensity of the epidemic here. Out of the 11 deaths reported nationally on May 1, Beijing also accounted for seven of them, taking the death toll to 82.

Apart from 1,553 confirmed cases of SARS in Beijing, the city also had 1,415 patients in the category of suspected SARS patients as of May 1 morning.

PTI