The World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday warned that continued global vigilance for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is crucial for the foreseeable future as the world is not yet SARS-free.

The United Nations agency declared that the outbreak of SARS has been contained worldwide after it removed China's Taiwan from list of SARS-infected areas.

"We do not mark the end of SARS today, but we observe a milestone: the global SARS outbreak has been contained," said WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland in a statement.

"Today the World Health Organization is removing Taiwan ...from the list of areas with recent local transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)," the UN agency announced.

"Taiwan is the last area to be removed from the list. It has been 20 days, or two consecutive 10-day incubation periods, since the last case on June 15," said the statement.

"Based on country surveillance reports, the human chains of SARS virus transmission appear to have been broken everywhere in the world,"it added.

However, due to the many questions remaining about SARS and the possibility that cases may have slipped through the surveillance net, WHO experts cautioned that SARS continues to threaten the world.

"It is possible that new SARS cases will appear. SARS could be a seasonal disease and return later in the year, a possibility based on what we know about other members of the coronavirus family," said WHO.

Since the first SARS case was reported last November, the SARS virus traveled in humans to 30 countries and areas of the world. To date, 8439 people have been affected, and 812 have died from SARS. Nearly 200 people still remain hospitalized with the disease.

Research into SARS must continue, said Brundtland, adding that "Scientific evidence will be crucial for our ability to best handle another SARS outbreak should there be one."

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