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Asia-Pacific health ministers met in Thailand on Saturday to plan how to prevent new outbreaks of the SARS virus, with China promising openness and cooperation in stopping future infections.

Opening the meeting of representatives from the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, China's deputy premier and health minister, Wu Yi, said Chinese society had become more open as a result of having to deal with the virus.

She said SARS was top of the Chinese government's agenda and pledged international openness and cooperation in future.

"When the epidemic first struck, we were unaware of its gravity. Moreover, our public health system was weak and flawed and there was neither unified chain of command nor smooth flow of information," Wu Yi told the ministers.

"Having overcome the SARS epidemic...Chinese society is more mature and open," she said.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), believed to have jumped from animals to humans in China late last year, has killed more than 800 people worldwide, infected about 8,500, trimmed economic growth forecasts and cost billions of dollars in lost business.

China was accused of covering up the extent of the outbreak for months after it first appeared in the southern province of Guangdong late last year.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra urged more scientific co-operation to battle SARS and diseases like it. He said it was likely SARS would never disappear.

"We cannot and must not drop our guard," Thaksin said.

"There is no telling when it will re-emerge and how much more damage it will do next time round. What's more, it is possible that the next outbreak will be of another disease just as unknown and as serious," he said.

"As long as we do not know enough about SARS, fear and uncertainty will be the driving forces in business decisions."

"EVERYTHING RELIES ON CHINA"

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says humans will probably be free from the virus within two to three weeks but fears a fresh outbreak could emerge in China again next winter.

"There needs to be now intensive work in China because this is where the disease emerged in the past, and if indeed it has gone from the human population, it's where it will emerge in the future," David Heymann, director of the WHO communicable disease unit, told Reuters on Friday.

"We must learn where the virus is in nature and what the risk factor is for that virus to be transmitted to humans. China is the only place where that can be done," he said. "Everything relies on China."

Hong Kong and Chinese mainland, which were the most severely affected by SARS, were given the all-clear by WHO this month, and Taiwan and Toronto, Canada, are expected to follow soon.

With drug companies saying a vaccine is at least six months away and would then need to be tested, Heymann said the priority was to develop a test for the virus that would catch 100 percent of cases. Several cases have slipped past tests in the past three months.

Nine ministers attended the APEC meeting, which is likely to adopt an action plan that will standardise health screening procedures and increase information flow about SARS and other diseases across the 21 members.

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