A Beijing disease control official said in Beijing Tuesday that the situation of the SARS epidemic was now kept at stable level among migrant workers in Beijing.

However, the official said there was no reason to relax because sporadic cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) were still emerging at a few construction sites around the city from time to time.

Ji Lin, deputy director of the Beijing municipal joint leading group on SARS control, told a press conference Tuesday morning that so far 184 probable cases and 141 suspected cases of SARS had been identified among a total of more than 640,000 migrant workers in Beijing.

He said an additional 3,646 had been put under isolation for medical observation, adding that five construction sites had been sealed off due to major outbreak of SARS among workers in these places.

There are a total of 3,276 construction sites in the city, employing more than 640,000 migrant workers from ten provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities outside Beijing.

Ji said the Beijing municipal government had adopted five major measures to prevent the SARS epidemic from spreading among the migrant workers, including strictly confining the workers' movement within the area of the construction sites.

He said the city was looking for loopholes in its prevention network for the migrant workers and would adopt active approach to plug in.

(Xinhua News Agency May 20, 2003)