Hong Kong had modified their treatments to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and adopted more effective protocols developed on the basis of people's new knowledge about the disease, an official said on Saturday.

Experience and studies had found that the initial procedure of giving patients large doses of Ribavirin and steroids early in the cycle could be modified, said Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, Hong Kong's Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, at a press conference.

Yeoh said this adjustment of the previous treatment, where Ribavirin and steroids were given together very early in the cycle, was being made in the light of new findings that had arisen during the SARS epidemic.

He described a particular facet of research or treatment that helped the public understand how SARS affects the body and which treatments were most effective.

Yeoh said it had been recently established through research done in Hong Kong that SARS passed through three phases, each lasting about a week. This new knowledge is enabling our specialist clinicians to adjust our current treatment with different medicines to correspond better to the phases of illness.

(Xinhua News Agency May 11, 2003)