Border controls tightened

Hong Kong customs officials have increased surveillance along the border with China and at sea after a bird-flu infected chicken was smuggled into the city, officials said yesterday.

The announcement came as health chief York Chow (周一嶽) prepared to travel to Shenzhen in China to discuss quarantine measures with authorities there.

Assistant commissioner for boundary and ports Chow Kwong (周廣) said officers were plugging the fluid border zone shared with China, across which a villager carried a chicken that later died of the H5N1 strain of the virus that has killed 85 people in Asia and Eastern Europe.

Experts fear that the virus will mutate into a form more lethal to humans and explode in a pandemic that could kill millions.

"Front-line customs officers have been put on high alert and examination of suspicious imported cargo and baggage has also been increased," the customs chief said.

"We have strengthened intelligence exchange with China and other customs authorities, the agriculture [department] and the food and environmental hygiene department to crack down on smuggling activities of birds and poultry," he added.

Three people who had come in contact with the chicken tested negative for flu on Friday.

But the scare has led to condemnation of villages that lie in the Hong Kong-Chinese border zone.

They are seen as weak links in the territory's otherwise tight bird flu defenses, which have kept the scourge from its shores since a boy and his father died of H5N1 in 2003.

The chicken and three dead wild birds found with H5N1 represent the worst bird flu scare to hit the city since two dead falcons were found with the virus in 2004.

A fourth wild bird suspected to have died of the disease was discovered over the weekend and is undergoing tests.

The infected chicken was smuggled in, possibly unwittingly, by a villager who had given the bird to family members as a Lunar New Year holiday gift.

A border police official said police were unable to inspect all belongings of people moving in an out of the borderland villages.

Chow, however, said officials would begin clamping down.

"Our frontline officers have also stepped up checks on incoming travellers' baggage," he said. "We urge people not to bring birds or poultry into Hong Kong illegally, or they will face prosecution."

Bird flu first became lethal to humans in 1997 when it killed six people during an outbreak in the territory.

Experts believe the scourge has been transmitted across the globe by migratory wild birds.

The latest scare in Hong Kong has renewed questions about whether or not China has been open about the spread of the disease within its borders.

Officials in Guangdong Province say the province is bird-flu clean. However, experts believe that diseased wild birds -- all local non-migratory species -- must have been infected from a nearby source.