China, first target Civet Cats, now the Rats are next

Main Category: Bird Flu / Avian Flu
Article Date: 08 Jan 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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With the slaughter of civet cats under way amid Sars fears, Guangzhou now plans to wipe out its rat population

Rats are the latest target in the dramatic anti-Sars campaign in China, where as many as 10,000 civet cats are being slaughtered because of fears that some animals may be spreading the disease to humans.

Officials yesterday said the entire rat population of the southern city of Guangzhou (China) must be wiped out.

'Guangzhou's carpet extermination of rats' said a headline in the Information Daily newspaper. It said 'the whole city will go about killing rats, not leaving out even one household'.

The provincial capital of Guangdong (China) holds an annual rat-killing drive, but this year 'the second goal is to prevent the spread of Sars', said a Health Bureau spokesman.

The rat extermination is to begin on Saturday.

Saturday is also the deadline for the killing of thousands of civet cats and related animals seized from wildlife markets in Guangzhou and surrounding Guangdong province. Hundreds of the animals have been drowned, electrocuted or incinerated since Monday.

Guangzhou is the site of China's first confirmed Sars patient this season, a 32-year-old television producer. The order to kill civet cats came after genetic tests showed a possible link between the patient and a virus found in the animals.

The government said the order affected about 10,000 civet cats.

Experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) are now examining rats from the man's apartment building to find a possible source of infection.

'But as to any confirmed links, there are none yet,' said Mr Roy Wadia, the WHO spokesman in Beijing.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) is believed to have emerged in Guangdong in November 2002, possibly jumping from animals to humans. It killed 58 people in the province and a total of 774 worldwide - mostly in Asia - before subsiding in June.

'The virus is relatively promiscuous. It can infect many different animal species, probably also including rodents, so taking all those things together, the question really is whether the culprit is indeed the civet cat,' said Dutch virologist Albert Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam.

Experts have warned that China's hasty culling of civet cats and other animals could be premature and misguided.

'There's a great suspicion of a link, but there's no clear evidence, scientific proof that civet cats are spreading this disease to humans,' said Mr Bob Dietz of the WHO. 'The whole thing is going ahead faster than seems necessary.'

Safety measures were not taken in all cases, raising fears that the disease could spread to workers carrying out the slaughter.

'We saw some pictures where people weren't wearing goggles,' Mr Dietz said.

While civet cats in Guangdong are being targeted, many civet cats sold there come from other provinces, which so far have not ordered a similar round of killing.

But the Xinhua news agency said the local authorities across the country had stepped up their supervision and management of wildlife markets.

Newspapers have warned the public to take precautions.

'While killing rats, you must wear disinfected gloves,' said the Guangzhou Daily.

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