International health experts said yesterday they are seeking a vaccine for the bird flu that has killed five people in Vietnam and millions of chickens across Asia, while China vowed to step up vigilance at its border with Vietnam to keep out the disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that because of "mounting concern" over the five deaths, it is working on a new vaccine to protect people from the avian flu that has struck poultry farms in "unprecedented epidemics" in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan.
"This is in response to a threat we see and a threat we're still trying to assess," WHO spokesman Bob Dietz said in Hanoi yesterday.
Laboratories in Hong Kong and Japan are working with flu virus obtained from two of the victims in Vietnam. The WHO also oversaw production of a similar vaccine during last February's bird flu scare, which caused two cases and one death in Hong Kong.
However, making sure a vaccine is safe for public consumption could be a lengthy process.
"It could be several months to several years" before it's ready for the general public, Dietz said.
The outbreak has savaged Asia's giant poultry industry. Thailand, while maintaining its chicken stocks are safe, is the latest country to order a mass slaughter of fowl as a precaution against bird flu.
The Bangkok Post reported that 850,000 chickens had already been slaughtered and quoted agricultural officials as saying there would be more precautionary killings in 20 provinces.
Cambodia, which has temporarily banned imports of Vietnamese poultry, said yesterday it will destroy 159,000 duck eggs seized from traders who smuggled them illegally from Vietnam.
In Hong Kong, a dead falcon tested positive for bird flu yesterday, prompting officials to step up surveillance at local chicken farms, although they said the public was in no danger.
The peregrine falcon had the deadly H5N1 virus, which crossed over from chickens to humans in Hong Kong in 1997 and killed six people.
A WHO team plus six scientists from the US Centers for Disease Control were in Vietnam investigating how the same H5N1 virus jumped from poultry to people there, Dietz said.
Vietnam is the only country with confirmed cases this year of bird flu in people; at least five have died.
The scientists are trying to determine exactly how the flu is being transmitted from bird to human. Among the puzzles they need to solve is why the bulk of the bird infections have occurred in southern Vietnam, while all the human victims have been from the northern region around Hanoi.
Health officials believe patients contracted the disease through contact with sick birds, but have not confirmed that.
So far, there has been no evidence of person-to-person transmission. But health officials have warned that if the avian virus mutates to allow human transmission, it could make the disease a bigger health crisis than SARS, which killed nearly 800 people worldwide last year.
The spread of bird flu, along with the re-emergence of SARS -- with three recent cases confirmed in China -- has put Asia on a region-wide health alert.
It is the first such bird flu epidemic in Japan since 1925, and the first ever documented in Vietnam and South Korea.
China has banned chicken imports from Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, and on Tuesday, its southern province of Yunnan closed all 40 trade posts along its 1,200km border with Vietnam.
China's state-run media announced yesterday that the country's Cabinet was ordering agencies that deal with border areas to increase inspections. Prevention of bird flu must be considered an "imperative task," the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The government also has ordered inspections of fowl markets, storage facilities and processing factories, and told local inspectors to report to superiors daily.
If the disease is found, all poultry within 3km must be slaughtered and all poultry within 5km be vaccinated immediately, the government said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS