EIJING, May 8 — With the giddy joy of a graduation party, some 400 students, teachers and workers emerged from two weeks' quarantine at a university in central Beijing today, providing some of the first cheerful television images from the SARS epidemic.

But on this day, too, 94 more residents of this frightened capital were told by doctors that they have the contagious respiratory disease, and a Communist Party leader said that more than 120 officials around the country had been fired or disciplined for a "lack of vigor" in containing the dangerous virus or for concealing local cases.

The happiness of students released from isolation today at Northern Jiaotong University was clearly genuine. Many whooped and threw bouquets into the air, though others seemed more weary and left their compound with bags of dirty laundry.

The city government did its best to turn the moment into a public morale booster. A lineup of national and local officials gave short talks and then tried to lead the crowd in a patriotic song, "Sing to the Motherland." Students were given Chinese flags to wave, and young Communist Party members and aspirants from the campus handed out bouquets.

All the nation's major media were invited and the scene was broadcast live on Beijing television.

"I don't know if all this ceremony was necessary, but we don't care, we're just happy to be let out of our dorms," said Liu Qiang, a freshman in computer sciences.

Some students said their joy was tinged with anger at the official laxity in previous months, when SARS was silently spreading in the city and the government was saying the disease was under control.

During their 15 days of isolation, the dormitory residents were allowed to play basketball or walk around in a courtyard. They watched television and had food delivered, and most said that while their plight was hard to endure at first, they got used to it.

Three dormitories at the university, which emphasizes technical subjects, were sealed off in late April with 373 students, 4 teachers and 23 workers inside after SARS cases appeared. At least 12 students at the university became ill with SARS, while 7 others are listed as suspect cases, official reports said today.

A senior in the law department, Fan Miao, one of those tapped to deliver flowers to the freed dormitory residents, put the most positive face on the episode, saying, "This is a happy day, a victory, one successful battle in the war against SARS."

A quarantine was also lifted today at a building of the Central University of Finance and Economics, which appears to have been hardest hit of the city's schools, with 19 students and staff members becoming ill and 2 people, both retired teachers, dying from SARS.

China, and especially Beijing, which has become the new global epicenter of the epidemic, has not had much to cheer about in recent weeks. And today, apart from the relaxing of the quarantines at the two universities, was no exception.

The country reported 6 more deaths from the contagious respiratory disease, making China's total deaths 224 and pushing the global toll beyond the 500 mark. Shanghai, which in mysterious contrast to Beijing has had only a handful of cases, reported its first SARS death.

Beijing reported another 94 confirmed cases of SARS today, in line with a recent trend of close to 100 new patients per day, raising its cumulative total to 2,136. China has now reported 4,698 confirmed cases over all.

International experts say they are still unsure when the spread of the virus in Beijing will start to taper off, as it eventually did in Guangdong Province, where the disease first appeared last fall and then in Hong Kong.

The Chinese government initially tried to downplay the extent of SARS, especially in Beijing. But in April, the surging caseload in city hospitals and a growing global outcry about official dissembling led to a dramatic about-face.

On April 20, officials admitted that Beijing already had several hundred cases, and the health minister and the mayor of Beijing were both fired. Belatedly, the city began an aggressive policy of quarantines for people exposed to the virus, but cases have continued to surge.

No other more senior officials have lost their jobs, though many must have known the truth about the spreading disaster. But in numerous cities and provinces, state media disclosed today, at least 120 officials have been dismissed or disciplined for shortcomings in the newly energized SARS battle.

"This is the first time in China that during an emergency incident, officials have been dismissed for dereliction of duty on such a wide scale," a leader of the Communist Party Organization Department, who was not identified, was quoted as saying by the New China News Agency.

The greatest fear of Chinese and international health officials is that SARS may start spreading quickly in China's vast, medically underequipped interior provinces. So far, the most significant known spread outside Beijing or Guangdong Province has occurred in the impoverished provinces of Shanxi and Inner Mongolia.

But social tensions and fears of the disease have spread more widely and there were reports today of another violent protest by citizens trying to prevent SARS treatment or quarantine centers near their homes.

The latest incident, in the city of Chengde, 110 miles northeast of Beijing, is one of several that has been reported by foreign news media but hushed up by the authorities.

In Chengde, rioters overturned an ambulance and smashed medical equipment and windows on April 27, Reuters reported today. Twenty-seven people are being detained for up to 15 days and 13 others may face jail, a local official said.

The World Health Organization announced Thursday that it was extending its warning against nonessential travel to Tianjin municipality and Inner Mongolia in China, and to Taipei, in Taiwan.

Taipei's mayor, Ma Ying-jeou, said tonight that he thought it was "not quite fair" of the World Health Organization to advise against travel to Taipei "because we have taken so many precautions to make the city safe."

It would hardly affect business or tourist travel to the city, he said, because Taiwan has already imposed such strict travel restrictions of its own that flights and hotels are nearly empty.

No one except Taiwanese citizens may enter from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore or Toronto. Everyone arriving from any destination has his or her temperature taken at the airport and again at the entrance to almost every hotel and office building. Anyone with a fever over 100.4 is immediately taken to a hospital by ambulance and not released until the cause of the fever is determined.

A recent visitor from Hong Kong who refused to have his temperature taken, protesting that it would violate his civil rights, "was wrestled to the ground and we took it," boasted Mayor Ma, who has a law degree from Harvard. "His temperature was normal, but we fined him $2,000 for refusing."

Taiwan's health department reported another 6 probable cases today, raising the country's total to 131. There have been 13 deaths.

Most of the cases and 10 deaths have been linked to one patient at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital whose condition was misdiagnosed and who was kept in a 40-man ward from April 16 to 19, infecting at least 20 other patients and 15 staff members.

The hospital has been closed and disinfected and is soon to be reopened as an isolation hospital for SARS cases.

Taipei's city health commissioner, Dr. Chiou Shu-ti, said testing of probable SARS cases had found the suspect coronavirus in 84 percent of the cases linked to Hoping Hospital but only in 7 percent of the 70 cases not related to that outbreak.

That suggested that some early cases described as "probable" for SARS "had really been common cold or pneumonia," she said.

Health authorities are pursuing any hint of spread outside of hospitals. Any school with two unrelated cases is ordered closed; Taipei's American School closed today for that reason.