The Hong Kong government closed a pet bird market yesterday after a bird there was found to be carrying the H5N1 bird flu virus strain.
A routine bird flu surveillance program detected H5N1 in a fecal swab sample from a Daurian starling, the government said in a statement issued on Saturday night.
The statement said the swab sample was collected on June 4 at a pet bird shop in Hong Kong's bird garden, where about 70 shops sell pet birds and related products.
All birds at the shop involved were removed, the statement said. It did not say what would be done with them.
Hong Kong's administration has ordered a closure, until further notice, of all the pet bird shops in the bird garden for cleansing and disinfection, the statement said.
All stall vendors and workers have also been put under medical surveillance, it said.
The territory tests more than 200 swab samples from pet bird shops for avian flu viruses each month. None of the 3,000 samples collected last year were reported positive.
Hong Kong aggressively tests for bird flu following a 1997 outbreak when the disease jumped to humans and killed six people in the territory.
The situation prompted the government to slaughter Hong Kong's entire known poultry population of about 1.5 million birds.
Also see story:
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
UNWAVERING: Paraguay remains steadfast in its support of Taiwan, but is facing growing pressure at home and abroad to switch recognition to Beijing, Pena said Paraguayan President Santiago Pena has pledged to continue enhancing cooperation with Taiwan, as he and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed opposition to any unilateral change to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait using force, Japanese media reported on Saturday. Kishida yesterday completed a trip to France, Brazil and Paraguay, his first visit to South America since taking office in 2021. After the Japanese leader and Pena spoke for more than an hour on Friday, exchanging views on the situation in East Asia in the face of China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan, they affirmed that “unilateral attempts to change the