Last Updated: February 3, 2009 04:59 EST
By Simeon Bennett and Theresa Tang
Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- China has suffered an outbreak of bird flu among poultry even though the mainland government has yet to report such an incident, said Lo Wing-Lok, a Hong Kong government adviser on infectious diseases.
“There’s no doubt of an outbreak of bird flu in China, though the government hasn’t admitted it,” Lo said in a telephone interview today. “Inefficient communication between the Hong Kong and mainland authorities is an ongoing problem. Hong Kong has not been well-informed by the mainland.”
Eight people have been infected with the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in China this year, the most in a single month since 2003 when the lethal virus was first detected in humans, according to the World Health Organization. Three out of 12 dead birds found on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island tested positive for the strain, stoking concerns the virus is circulating widely among birds in southern Guangdong province which borders Hong Kong.
China hasn’t reported any cases of H5N1 among birds since December. The human cases show the virus must be circulating among birds, said Vincent Martin, a senior technical advisor on avian flu for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
“There must be some cases which have not been reported,” Martin said in a telephone interview today. “It’s not normal that we don’t receive any confirmation or any reports of outbreaks in poultry.”
Risk in Guangdong?
“We are concerned about the possibility of the virus being present in birds in Guangdong, given the sheer numbers of chickens and ducks there and their proximity to humans,” Peter Cordingley, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said in an e-mailed response to questions from Bloomberg News. Still, human infections in China so far this year are “within expectations,” Cordingley said.
The Guangdong provincial government hasn’t received any reports of an avian-flu epidemic since Hong Kong reported its latest cases, and the poultry industry is operating normally, the government-controlled news portal southcn.com said today, citing the province’s agricultural department.
China’s ministry of agriculture didn’t respond to faxed questions sent today by Bloomberg News.
International health officials have been monitoring H5N1 for more than a decade for signs it could mutate into a form that is easily spread between humans. A flu pandemic of avian or other origin could kill 71 million people worldwide and lead to a “major global recession” costing more than $3 trillion, according to a worst-case scenario outlined by the World Bank in October.
H5N1 has infected at least 404 people in 15 countries since 2003, killing 63 percent of them, according to the Web site of the Geneva-based WHO. Of 38 confirmed cases in China so far, 25 have been fatal.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net
hat-tip Niman
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