Taiwan government denies outbreak of lethal bird flu
Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2008-12-17 08:45 PM
The Council of Agriculture rejected media reports Wednesday that a dangerous type of bird flu had erupted in Tainan County, following a recent outbreak in Hong Kong.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times daily wrote on its front page Wednesday that the COA was covering up the outbreak in order not to disrupt Monday’s opening of daily direct air and shipping links with China. Last week’s case in Hong Kong was believed to be caused by eggs smuggled in from China.
COA chairman Chen Wu-hsiung said no abnormally large amounts of chickens had died in Tainan County.
He also rejected accusations of a cover-up, saying discussion of bird flu cases is in the hands of a 23-member panel of experts. “It’s not possible to silence all of them,” he said.
Because final test results had not come in yet, there had been no public announcement about the bird flu investigations, Chen explained.
Tainan County chief Su Huan-chih, a member of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, also denied the newspaper's allegations.
Lawmakers from the region said they had received anxious messages from chicken, duck and geese farmers worried about the repercussions on their business.
There was no bird flu of the dangerous H5N1 type in Taiwan, and there was no evidence of the H5N2 type, which in any event could not jump from chickens to humans, said Lin Ting, the vice chairman of the Department of Health’s Center for Disease Control.
The CDC recently tested eight Taiwanese, including recent visitors to China and Vietnam, for H5N1, but they all proved negative, Lin said.
Tests were still in progress on the death of chickens at a farm in Luchu, Kaohsiung County, in October, COA officials said. An estimated 400 birds, or 3 percent of the total at the farm, died, and preliminary reports indicated it might have been a case of the less dangerous H5N2 type. The other 10,000 animals were killed as a precaution.
hat-tip Shiloh
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