A mysterious pig-borne disease has spread to six more towns in southwest China and the number of people killed has risen to 31, the Chinese government said yesterday as it scrambled to reassure the public.
The health ministry said on its Web site that the total number of people affected increased to 152 by noon on Wednesday -- four more deaths and 21 more cases than the day before. Twenty-one people are in critical condition.
Six more towns in Sichuan Province reported cases on Wednesday, in addition to the two cities, Ziyang and Neijiang, where people first fell ill after slaughtering pigs foaming at the mouth last month, the ministry said.
PHOTO: AFP
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was baffled.
It said if the disease was indeed caused by the streptococcus suis bacterium, as preliminary Chinese results show, it would be the first time the bacterium had struck so many people at one time -- raising fears it had become more virulent.
The Chinese government was working to reassure the public that it had the problem under control, stressing the spread could be stopped if people avoided slaughtering infected pigs.
"We have the technology and procedures to bring the disease under control," the China Daily quoted an agriculture ministry official as saying.
Investigations show that only those who came in contact with infected pigs or pork -- through slaughtering or processing -- and had open wounds fell ill, the Beijing Daily Messenger cited experts as saying.
Those who only ate the cooked pork did not get sick, it said.
The victims were mostly farmers who raised pigs in small, insanitary farms. Farmers said they had a habit of eating sick pigs instead of burying them because they were poor.
Newspaper accounts said many people pitched in to shave the hair off the killed swine, wash the internal organs and chop up the meat to distribute.
One woman who fell ill was quoted by the Beijing Daily Messenger as saying that she did not think anything of the small wound on her hand when she helped a relative kill a pig last week.
"After killing the pig, our entire family boiled three bowls of pork to eat. After eating just a few mouthfuls of the meat, I felt my heart pound, dizzy and nauseous," Jiang Suhua said. "Later my legs were so weak I couldn't stand up. My arms and legs also had large blotches of blood under the skin."
Another farmer said that a relative gave him a slice of freshly cut pork and he became dizzy and weak just from taking the pork home.
Other symptoms include high fever, vomiting and hemorrhaging, with many patients going into severe shock. Some of the victims died within 10 hours of showing symptoms, reports said.
The disease is rare, with the first recorded case in Denmark in 1968. More than 200 cases of human infection have been reported since then, not counting the latest data.
WHO spokesman Bob Dietz said it was too soon to say the bacterium was the cause or the only cause of the outbreak, adding that more laboratory tests were needed to see if other factors may be at work.
"We can't discount the possibility there could be other bacteria, virus or something else active in here," Dietz said.
The bacterium is endemic in Asia, North America and Europe, he said.
If it is the cause of the outbreak, the Chinese farmers' close proximity to their pigs might be a reason for the large number of cases.
"What we're accustomed to seeing is one or two cases ... Here, where pigs and humans are so intertwined in the countryside, it might explain why so many people are becoming sick," Dietz said.
An outbreak occurred in 1998 in eastern Jiangsu Province and a few people died, the China Daily quoted researchers as saying, but they did not reveal a death toll.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
US-CHINA SUMMIT: MOFA welcomed US reassurance of no change in its Taiwan policy; Trump said he did not comment when Xi talked of opposing independence US President Donald Trump yesterday said he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Trump’s comments on Taiwan came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing US-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan. “I will make a determination,” Trump said, adding: “I’ll be making decisions. But, you know, I think the last thing we need right
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS