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.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS