The bird flu virus spread deeper into Asia yesterday and claimed its first human victim in Thailand, a six-year-old boy who caught a disease that is creating fears reminiscent of SARS.
Pakistan said two million chickens had died of a mild form of the disease and Taiwan reported a new outbreak of the mild H5N2 virus which cannot, unlike the H5N1 strain, pass to humans as it has in Vietnam, where it killed six people, and Thailand.
Thailand expanded its bird flu crisis zone to 10 of its 76 provinces from just two as it grappled with a virus the World Health Organization fears might mate with human influenza and unleash a flu pandemic.
Indonesia said at least 400 farms across the vast archipelago suffered outbreaks. But officials said they would only know by the end of the week, when laboratory test results were available, whether it was the less dangerous of two avian flu strains.
The WHO said it had seen no evidence its greatest fear, people-to-people transmission, had been realized yet.
But it fears the potentially deadly H5N1 strain could jump into Myanmar and Laos from stricken farms just over the border in Thailand.
Hans Wagner, a senior official of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, said 700 chickens had died on a farm in Vientiane, the Lao capital, and a Thai laboratory was trying to find out why.
The results would not be known before today, he said.
"Laos also has a very poor public health infrastructure," WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley said in Manila. "If the virus became embedded in Laos, we'll have very serious problems."
The spread of bird flu, which has also struck in Japan, South Korea and Cambodia, has emerged with a rapidity the WHO calls "historically unprecedented" and the Thai and Indonesian governments have been criticized for not revealing it sooner.
"We don't know how this virus is spreading and so it's safe to presume that nowhere can consider itself safe," Cordingley said. "The challenge is growing by the day."
The Thai boy's death means all but one of at least seven confirmed human bird flu victims have been children, leaving scientists trying to find why the young are vulnerable.
Another Thai boy was confirmed to have contracted bird flu yesterday. The country also has 10 suspected cases, of whom five have died, and tests are underway to determine whether bird flu was the cause.
So far, all the victims have contracted the disease from sick fowl and not from other people.
But a vaccine for people is months away because the virus has mutated since it made the leap from animals to humans in Hong Kong in 1997.
"We have to start again from the drawing board to create a prototype vaccine from this virus, and then we have to go into commercial development and this is a slow business with many clinical trials and other obstacles along the way," Cordingley said.
RESILIENCE: Deepening bilateral cooperation would extend the peace sustained over the 45 years since the Taiwan Relations Act, Greene said Taiwan-US relations are built on deep economic ties and shared values, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday, adding that strengthening supply chain security in critical industries, enhancing societal resilience through cooperation and deepening partnerships are key to ensuring peace and stability for Taiwan in the years ahead. Greene made the remarks at the National Security Youth Forum, organized by National Taiwan University’s National Security and Strategy Studies Institution in Taipei. In his address in Mandarin Chinese, Greene said the Taiwan-US relationship is built on deep economic ties and shared interests, and grows stronger through the enduring friendship between
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
RSS