China's Health ministry said that Beijing's last two confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) patients will be removed from isolation soon in Beijing on Wednesday.

The ministry said one patient surnamed Yang has had normal temperature for nine straight days and remained in generally good condition.

Yang will be discharged from hospital soon since Beijing's experts team believes that the patient has recovered well enough to leave hospital, the ministry said.

The other patient, with surname of Zhang, is still in serious condition due to other diseases, the ministry said.

However, the ministry said since Zhang's isolation period for SARS has came to an end, he will be transferred to another hospital from the Beijing Ditan Hospital, where SARS patients were treated, for further medical treatment.

Meanwhile, the ministry said no new SARS cases were reported on the Chinese mainland for the past 24 hours.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said that China's latest SARS outbreak has been contained.

"It has been more than three weeks since the last case was placed in isolation in China's latest SARS outbreak, prompting the WHO to declare that the chain of human-to-human transmission appears to have been broken," WHO said in a press release.

WHO said the WHO experts and the Chinese authorities are still trying to determine the exact cause of the outbreak.

(Xinhua News Agency May 20, 2004)