Officials from the mainland and the SAR will attend the meeting on severe respiratory syndrome (SRS), which has been organized by the World Health Organization (WHO).

SRS has affected some 200 people in Hong Kong -- most of whom are health care workers and relatives of pneumonia patients.

Yeoh Eng-kiong, secretary for health, welfare and food of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, told the media on Saturday that Hong Kong and the mainland had agreed to foster closer ties on information exchange and disease notification on the recent outbreak of SRS.

Efforts will be made to provide as much information as possible about the infectious disease in the mainland through the Ministry of Health in Beijing, he said.

Yeoh said he would also seek to enhance communication with authorities in South China's Guangdong Province.

The WHO has also sent a team of experts to Hong Kong to provide technical assistance to health authorities there.

In another development, WHO said yesterday in Hong Kong that the pneumonia virus had yet to be conclusively identified but new findings have fuelled hopes the disease could be curbed.

Hong Kong researchers said on Saturday they had isolated the virus, which they believed was new. They have designed the first diagnostic test which means patients with SRS can be identified and treated faster.

The WHO yesterday praised the Hong Kong team's findings but sounded a note of caution.

"The race to identify the SRS causative agent is by no means over. Although the virus has now been isolated, its identity remains elusive," it said in a statement.

In Guangdong, public health officials said over the weekend that more than 70 per cent of atypical pneumonia patients in Guangdong have recovered.

The epidemic, which has been afflicting the province since November, has been brought under control, experts from the departments said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2003)