All 120,000 chickens at a farm in Pingtung County were culled after some had been confirmed to have become infected with the highly pathogenic H5N2 avian influenza, according to the Pingtung County Agriculture Department.
The farm in southern Taiwan reported sporadic deaths of chickens early last month, with deaths continuing to climb despite vaccinations. Officials took samples again on Monday and confirmed the infection as H5N2.
The farm and two or three others nearby have never reported avian flu virus infections before, a county official said.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Director-General Chang Su-san (張淑賢) said that the farm could resume raising chickens, adding that it must wait 42 days after disinfection and monitoring.
The department also demanded that 50 employees and 10 frequent visitors to the farm have their health monitored for a 10-day period.
To prevent another outbreak, the bureau plans to reinforce monitoring of farms within a 3km radius, and regularly take samples for testing from farms within a 1km radius of the affected farm.
Chang said that the death rate in poultry has decreased to 40 per day, falling below the total considered abnormal, adding that egg production was also back to normal.
Pingtung County Agriculture Department Deputy Director-General Yao Chih-wang (姚志旺) said his department and the Animal Disease Control Center have put a ban on the movement of chickens and begun to disinfect the farm, and would continue to monitor the situation.
Yao said that some eggs were shipped from the farm before the discovery, but added that there was no need for concern because eggs pose no threat if they are cooked.
The department said while farms nearby have no confirmed infections, farms in Sinyuan Township (新園) and Wandan Township (萬丹) have reported irregular deaths of ducks and geese, and samples have been taken for testing.
H5N2 is often reported in poultry, but no human infections of the virus have been confirmed so far.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching