The strain was isolated from a patient in Hainan province, China, in 1967 and described by Gao et al. (1984) as a new serovar named hainan-whitcombi. The serovar was recognized by the TSC (Manchester, 1986) in spite of its incorrect namin, which it is expected to change to hainan (personal communication, Chen Ting-zuo, 1987). Because of incomplete documentation the serovar is listed with i.d. in the Revised List of 1988 (Kmety, Dikken, 1988). Recently some laboratories have reported controversial typing results. Therefore the serovar is now marked by ++ in the attached updated list.