SHANGHAI, April 25 (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation dismissed on Friday speculation Shanghai was covering up a spread of the deadly flu-like SARS virus, but warned of a future outbreak that could strain a thinly stretched healthcare system.
WHO officials wrapped up a five-day visit to China's commercial hub saying they expected suspected cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome to spike after the city adopted a wider classification method on April 22.
But the agency affirmed the city's current count of just two infections and 18 suspected cases, with zero deaths so far, despite scepticism among locals and some foreign diplomats.
"We don't find the big flaws there, we don't find the cover-up, we don't find the systematic gap in how the cases were being identified," said Keiji Fukuda, a WHO expert consultant.
Mainland China's death toll stands at about 115 deaths and more than 2,600 infections -- more than half the global count.
The city of 16 million, which houses the plants of such multinationals as General Motors Corp, had so far sidestepped a crisis because of an apparent absence of highly infectious "super-spreaders", officials said.
"We would expect the number of suspected cases to increase substantially," said Daniel Chin, another WHO consultant.
"We are concerned that if and when, and it's more a question of when, a larger number of cases are introduced into Shanghai, will the system be able to cope with it at that point," he told a news conference.