Nearly 9 000 chickens have died in China’s fourth outbreak of avian flu in just more than two weeks with migratory birds the most likely culprits, the ministry of agriculture said on Friday.
The virus has hit family farms in six different villages in Heishan county in China’s north-east Liaoning province, and 8 940 chickens have died, the ministry said in a statement on its website.
”Heishan county is located on the route used by migratory birds to get from East Asia to Australia, and 20 dead magpies and other wild birds have been found,” the ministry said. ”Experts believe this outbreak may have been caused by migratory birds.”
The ministry said 369 900 birds have been destroyed within a radius of 3km of the outbreak to prevent it spreading, while another 13,9-million have been vaccinated.
China has reported three other outbreaks of bird flu since October 19, the first in the Inner Mongolia region in the north of the country, and the other two in Anhui and Hunan provinces in the centre.
Agriculture Minister Du Qinglin has headed to the outbreak area with a team of experts, the ministry said, highlighting the high priority the Chinese authorities have given to bird flu.
The agricultural ministry said local veterinarians were first alerted to some chickens dying in Heishan county’s Badaohao village on October 26 and reported the case to their superiors.
The ministry on November 1 said it was most likely bird flu and confirmed it two days later.
No human deaths have been reported in the Heishan outbreak. The government insists no one in China has died or even been infected from any previous bird flu outbreak.
In another effort to prevent human infections, the Chinese government has urged its citizens going overseas not to enter areas affected by bird flu, the People’s Daily reported on Friday.
The suggestion was made in a circular published jointly by China’s health ministry and quality supervision administration on Thursday, according to the paper.
Despite the precautions, the English-language China Daily warned on Friday that ”the jury is still out” on whether humans would eventually fall victim to bird flu in China.
”No one knows whether the increasingly threatening bird flu will ultimately hit humans in China,” the paper said in an editorial. ”But we must make the best preparations for the worst-case scenario.”
Bird flu was initially suspected when a 12-year-old girl died in a bird-flu-infected part of Hunan province late last month, but China later said the cause was pneumonia.
Outbreak in Vietnam
Meanwhile, about 4 000 poultry and water fowl have died in fresh outbreaks of bird flu in northern Vietnam’s Bac Giang province, north of the capital, an animal health official said on Friday.
”The chairperson of the provincial people’s committee on Thursday declared that bird flu has hit three communes,” said the official from Bac Giang’s animal health department, refusing to be named.
About 4 000 poultry and water fowl have died in the province’s Yen Lu, Van Trung and Tang Tien communes, about 70km north of Hanoi, from October 25, he said.
The areas are now under a close watch and a quarantine has been imposed.
Two people died in central Vietnam’s Quang Binh province in late October with symptoms similar to bird flu, but doctors said their samples had never been tested.
Tests are now being made for two suspected human cases, one in Hanoi and another in Bac Giang province, both hospitalised after showing bird-flu symptoms.
Two-thirds of the more than 60 people killed by the H5N1 strain of bird flu since late 2003 have been in Vietnam.
Experts fear a pandemic could kill millions across the globe if H5N1 mutates and becomes easily transmissible among humans. — Sapa-AFP