The World Health Organization (WHO) credited SARS for helping Asia prepare for a flu that has killed millions of chickens and at least three people, while governments struggled yesterday to contain the virus with further curbs on poultry imports and culls of sick birds.
A minister in Thailand angrily denied that his government was covering up a major outbreak of the avian flu there, while WHO officials worked to figure out how the disease jumped to people in Vietnam -- where at least three have been killed.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has hit poultry farms hardest in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, sparking slaughters of millions of chickens.
Asian governments have worked quickly to try to curb the virus, and the WHO's Vietnam representative Pascale Brudon attributed that in part to last year's major outbreak of SARS.
"I can see there is increased awareness of the need for good surveillance, the need for acting urgently when we have a problem. I think this is a ... positive aspect and a lesson learned from SARS, which has helped us in this new crisis," Brudon said in Hanoi.
In Taiwan, health workers donned surgical masks and blue suits yesterday to dispose of 20,000 chickens infected with a milder variant of the virus hitting the other Asian countries. Officials on the island said the H5N2 strain poses little threat but that they wanted to avoid possible mutations and other risks.
Not taking any chances, Hong Kong moved to bar poultry imports from Taiwan.
Taiwan, China and Cambodia already have halted poultry imports from Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. Indonesia barred poultry imports from those three countries yesterday.
The H5N1 virus is the same one that jumped to people in Hong Kong in 1997, killing six.
The deadly virus -- highly contagious among chickens -- has not shown any human-to-human transmission, and is believed to spread to humans through contact with infected birds. Health officials say if it mutates and mixes genetic material with a human flu virus it could become contagious in humans, sparking a major health crisis.
Government officials have sought to calm any fears about eating poultry products, saying there is no danger if the public properly cooks the meat and eggs of chickens.
In Taiwan, a Changhwa County official went on ETTV news to spread that message, cracking an egg and slurping the yolk.
"It tastes good and it's very nutritious," he said.
In Thailand, farmers and a consumer group have charged for several days that millions of chickens have been infected by the bird flu and that the government is covering it up. But the government insists the outbreak is bird cholera -- not bird flu.
"Irresponsible media and some groups of people are trying to spread this rumor," Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchob said yesterday. "There is no bird flu here."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
RSS