Bird flu fears in China prompt extensive vaccination, closure of Hong Kong sanctuary

Bird flu may have reared its ugly head once again. China's Ministry of Agriculture on Friday defended its bird flu vaccination program, stating there had been no outbreaks since last June despite a number of human cases, some fatal, this year.

Five people died of bird flu in China in January, in regions far removed from each other and in which there were no reported cases of bird flu in birds. Three others have become ill, of which two have recovered, a toddler infected in Hunan and a young man in Guizhou.

Apart from the discovery of a case during routine sampling in eastern China's Jiangsu province in December, Chinese testing has not detected any bird flu since June. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation agreed with the findings.

"The Ministry of Agriculture in China has been extremely pro-active in investigating the situation in domestic poultry in provinces where these cases have occurred," the FAO's senior technical adviser Vincent Martin said. "So far, despite a large number of samples from poultry being collected and laboratory tested, no evidence of infection in poultry has been found to explain these human cases."

Meanwhile, two ducks and a goose found in Hong Kong have tested positive for H5N1, the strain of bird flu that can infect humans. Hong Kong closed its Mai Po nature preserve as a precaution for 21 days from Friday, after a dead grey heron found there also tested positive for bird flu.

Hong Kong authorities are still testing 14 other dead birds found last week on Lantau Island. "We're checking water currents" to see if the birds were washed ashore from mainland China, a government spokeswoman said.

While H5N1 rarely infects people, experts fear it could mutate into a form that people could easily pass to one another, sparking a pandemic that could kill tens of millions and topple the global economy.

China has vaccinated aggressively since bird flu first reappeared among humans in Asia in 2003. But vaccination does not eliminate the virus. In 2008, China reported six outbreaks of bird flu that killed 9,000 birds and led to the culling of 590,000 birds. A total of 25 people have died from avian influenza in China since the disease re-emerged in 2003, according to World Health Organisation figures.