Health officials in Hong Kong said yesterday, Wednesday 11th June, they would start culling all live chickens on sale in retail outlets and markets after more birds in four markets tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus that is also lethal to humans.
“We have announced that all market stores and fresh provision shops selling live poultry are now infected areas,” said Director of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Cheung Siu-hing, in a press briefing reported by China Daily earlier today, Thursday.
The authorities decided to carry out the cull after samples from markets in Tuen Mun, Fanling and Ap Lei Chau tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus.
Cheung said about 3,500 chickens would be slaughtered altogether, at approximately 470 retail outlets in 64 markets all over the city. At the moment only chickens in retail markets will be culled; chickens on farms in Hong Kong will not be affected.
York Chow, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, said samples from chicken farms had tested negative for H5N1, and that most of the farms were relatively safe, because most of them had already installed bio-security measures. However, supplies of live chickens from farms are suspended for the time being.
The authorities have also announced, in line with international guidelines, that they are suspending the import of live chickens from the mainland for 21 days starting yesterday, Wednesday. The ban could be extended, they said.
The latest announcement follows the culling of 2,700 live chickens last Saturday after five samples from the Po On Road Market in Kowloon tested positive for H5N1.
The largest culling in Hong Kong was in 1997 when the city’s whole poultry population was culled: 1.5 million birds in total. There have been outbreaks since then, but no major ones.
According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO, 28th May), there have been 383 laboratory confirmed cases of humans infected with H5N1 throughout the world, including 241 who died from the infection. The hardest hit nations are Indonesia (133 cases, 108 deaths) and Viet Nam (106 cases, 52 deaths). China has reported 30 cases and 20 deaths.
Bangladesh confirmed its first case of human infection with H5N1 avian influenza at the end of last month, said the WHO. The victim was a 16-month -old baby boy from Komalapur, Dhaka, who has survived. It is believed the infant may have caught the virus from exposure to live and slaughtered chickens at his home. So far none of his family or neighbours has tested positive for the virus.
At present it is only possible for a human to catch the deadly H5N1 form of bird flu from an infected bird. However, experts say it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates into a form where it can pass easily from human to human, and when it does, millions of people all over the world will die from it.
Chow said no virus mutations have been detected in the Hong Kong samples.
Source: China Daily, WHO.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD