116 Quarantined After Bird Flu Outbreak
November 10, 2005 from breitbart.com
SHANGHAI, China - Authorities in China said Thursday they
have quarantined 116 people in northeastern Liaoning province
after two new outbreaks of bird flu there. The province has
now suffered three outbreaks in less than three weeks despite
a massive campaign to contain the virus. Kuwait reported the
first two cases of bird flu in the Gulf region but said it
would not do the tests to determine whether they were caused
by the deadly and virulent H5N1 strain.
China did not make clear the extent to which the 116 people
in Liaoning were being isolated. The country has imposed quarantines
in other bird-flu afflicted areas but in at least one case
residents were restricted only from leaving their village.
Authorities also disinfected homes, water wells, and streets
within 2 miles of the latest outbreak sites on family chicken
farms in Liaoning, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The latest outbreaks of the H5N1 virus in the cities of Jinzhou
and Fuxin in Liaoning began Sunday and killed 1,100 chickens
on the family farms, the Agriculture Ministry said.
China has not yet confirmed any cases of human deaths from
the H5N1 strain, which has killed at least 63 people elsewhere
in Asia. But it has asked the World Health Organization to
help it determine whether bird flu killed a 12-year-old girl
who died in a town where there had been an outbreak.
Experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form that is easily
passed from human to human and spark a pandemic.
The latest outbreaks in China added to concerns that fake
bird flu vaccines for poultry were threatening public health
after officials reported an unapproved product was sold in
Liaoning province, site of the three most recent outbreaks.
"This is something we find to be a very unwelcome development,"
Peter Cordingley, a World Health Organization spokesman, said
in comments broadcast by Hong Kong's Cable TV. "Quite
clearly, there's a major problem in Liaoning, and it seems
from what the Chinese are saying this has to do with using
shoddy, inferior or maybe fake vaccines for poultry."
"And what we have now, almost certainly we think, is
sick chickens who are showing no symptoms, and that is very,
very bad. They are silent carriers of the virus," Cordingley
said.
China identified the source of the latest infections as "wild
animals," presumably migratory birds.
Xinhua said authorities had so far culled 170,000 poultry
in and around Chaoyangsi village in Fuxin city and 500,000
poultry in Jinzhou's Daling village.
Bird flu outbreaks have been reported in the past month among
fowl in northern China's Inner Mongolia, eastern China's Anhui
and in the central province of Hunan.
The WHO praised China's openness in dealing with its bird
flu problems.
"We have to say from the WHO's point of view, the political
response from China was first class. Very senior members of
the government were in Liaoning immediately," said Cordingley,
who was attending an AIDS conference in the southwestern Chinese
city of Kunming.
"They've put a lot of money into this. We're very happy
with the response," he said.
Health officials say human infections are inevitable if China
cannot stop repeated outbreaks in poultry, and the government
has ordered increasingly strict preventive measures.
In Kuwait, officials said tests in a local laboratory detected
an H5 strain of bird flu but it had not been determined whether
it was the deadly H5N1 strain or the less virulent H5N2 strain.
Dr. Mohammed al-Mihana of Kuwait's Public Authority for Agriculture
and Fisheries said authorities would not do any further tests
to discover which strain had cropped up there.
"We are satisfied with our tests, and we find no need
for further investigations," al-Mihana said.
Sheik Fahd Salem Al-Ali Al Sabah, the head of the Public
Authority, told reporters the first case was found in an imported
peacock at the airport quarantine center. The second case,
probably a migrating wild fowl, was found on the beach, he
said. Both birds were culled, he added.
The entire Middle East region has been worried about possible
outbreaks because the region sits on important migratory routes
for birds. Migratory birds have already spread the virus to
Russia, Turkey and Romania.
