China unveiled new rules to combat bird flu yesterday, threatening fines and police action against people who do not cooperate.
China has announced 17 outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of avian flu since the middle of last month, and is struggling to control a virus that has been spotted in seven provinces and regions from the frigid northeast to the remote west.
"Although some cases in affected areas have been controlled effectively, the situation as a whole is still severe," Vice Agriculture Minister Yin Chengjie (
Yin said 21 million poultry have been culled so far this year, while other officials have said billions of birds would be vaccinated in an effort to contain the disease.
Bird flu outbreaks have to be reported to the State Council within four hours of being discovered by regional governments, and fines of up to 5,000 yuan (US$620) can be levied for obstructing prevention work or refusing to comply.
"Any practices which affect the reporting of epidemic diseases, including deception, false or late reporting, are forbidded," Yin said.
If needed, the police and even the army may be called in. Officials could be demoted or fired for not reporting outbreaks.
Quarantine measures have also been stepped up in China, and even North Korea said yesterday it was was tightening border controls to stop bird flu.
Pyongyang has banned poultry imports from countries with bird flu and is closely scrutinizing other goods, said customs official Kim Hyong-chol, quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Meanwhile, Romania found the virus in four hens, Indonesia is awaiting test results on a 35-year-old man who died in Jakarta and a senior US official warned that his country isn't ready for a human flu pandemic.
ROMANIA
In Romania, Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur said tests in Britain confirmed that four hens in a remote village had the H5N1 strain of the virus. He said authorities planned to destroy 2,000 birds.
``We are keeping things under control,'' Flutur told television station Realitatea TV.
Elsewhere in Europe, birds have tested positive for H5N1 in Russia, Croatia and Turkey.
In Indonesia, preliminary tests on the man who died in Jakarta were positive for bird flu but officials were awaiting confirmation from a World Health Organization-authorized lab in Hong Kong, said Health Ministry official I Nyoman Kandun.
UNITED STATES
In Washington, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt warned that the US isn't ready for a human flu pandemic, lacking the capacity to quickly manufacture the 300 million needed doses of a flu vaccine.
This year, manufacturers made enough vaccine to protect 4.3 million Americans from the latest human flu strains. The US has more than 295 million people. If a pandemic occurs, a new vaccine would have to be created and manufactured.
``We're not as prepared as we need to be .... We will not have enough for everyone,'' Leavitt said on Sunday.
TAIWANESE DISCOVERY
In other news, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) said yesterday that it has found three local substitutes for a key ingredient in the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu.
Lee Chung-hsi (
"Our researchers have succeeded in extracting shikimic acid from three local plants. The concentration is lower than the concentration of shikimic acid in bajiao, but we can use it to produce Tamiflu when there is a shortage of shikimic acid or when the price of shikimic acid goes up," Lee told the Legislative Yuan.
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