Beijing ? China on Wednesday revised down the number of people living in the country with the HIV virus, but international health agencies warned that with 70,000 new infections last year, there was no room for complacency.

They also warned the virus was no longer restricted to drug users and those who sold blood, but had begun to spread quickly in the general population.

“China’s HIV infections have been linked to high-risk behavior. But now sex work is moving it toward the general population,” said Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organization’s representative in China.

By the end of 2005, China had an estimated 650,000 people infected with the HIV virus, 75,000 of whom had full-blown AIDS, according to the study by WHO, China’s Ministry of Health and the U.N. AIDS agency.

Bekedam said the new infection rate, roughly 200 cases a day, showed the situation in China was “more serious than we thought.”