Dead birds put China on defense against flu
BEIJING – China announced that it ordered emergency measures Saturday to prevent an outbreak of avian flu after investigators said migratory birds found dead in a western province this month were killed by the virus.
Nature reserves were closed and local authorities were ordered to watch wild birds for signs of disease and impose quarantines if necessary, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
It said farms near migration routes were ordered to immunize their birds, while the public was warned to “stop contact with poultry.”
The order came hours after the Agriculture Ministry announced that migratory birds found dead May 4 in the western province of Qinghai were killed by the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.
Xinhua said some came from Southeast Asia, but it didn’t say what species they were.
The ministry “asked the whole country to pay keen attention to the new confirmed cases of migratory birds and to take effective measures to curb possibly spreading the epidemic,” Xinhua said.
The regional death toll in the latest bird flu outbreak rose to 53 this week when another fatality was reported in Vietnam.
The World Health Organization warned Thursday that the virus poses a great potential threat to humans if it develops the ability to spread easily from person to person.
There is no evidence so far of such a change, and most cases have been traced to contact with sick birds.
China’s government is especially sensitive to public health threats following widespread criticism over its slow response to severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreaks reported in 2003.
Since the SARS outbreak, the government has set up a nationwide disease-warning network and created contingency plans for possible outbreaks.
Health experts worry that birds that cross China on migratory routes stretching from Siberia to New Zealand could spread the virus to the country’s vast population of ducks, geese and other domestic fowl.
China’s most recent known case of bird flu occurred last July in the eastern province of Anhui.