Closing live poultry markets, though a huge economic setback, is a sure-fire way of curbing H7N9 avian flu in the case of an outbreak, disease control researchers said yesterday.
The closure of 780 live poultry markets (LPMs) in the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Huzhou and Nanjing in April reduced the daily number of H7N9 infections by more than 97 percent, a study in the Lancet medical journal said.
“Our findings confirm that LPM closure is a highly effective intervention to prevent human disease and protect public health,” study lead author Benjamin Cowling of the University of Hong Kong said in a statement. “Without this robust evidence, policymakers would struggle to justify further closures of LPMs because of the millennia-old culture of trading live birds and the potential huge economic loss on the poultry industry in China.”
Photo: AFP
The study said losses associated with the closures in April have been estimated at about 57 billion yuan (US$9 billion).
A total of 137 people have been infected by the virus since February and 45 have died.
Live poultry markets are common in China and countries such as Thailand, Laos and Singapore, and present an ideal environment for virus spread between birds held together in very high concentrations.
The researchers had collected information about every laboratory-confirmed human case of H7N9 infection in the four cities over several months and constructed a statistical model showing the before-and-after effect of market closure.
The team found the closures reduced the average daily number of infections by 99 percent each in Shanghai and Hangzhou, and by 97 percent in Huzhou and Nanjing — and rapidly.
They also looked at the potential effects of other factors such as a change in humidity, but found nothing else that could explain the sudden drop.
Cowling said two new cases of H7N9 identified in China’s eastern Zhejiang Province this month were of “great concern” as they showed the virus had continued to circulate and had the potential to cause a new outbreak in the fall-winter flu season.
The team said local authorities must immediately close poultry markets in affected areas in the case of future outbreaks.
“In view of the potentially huge adverse economic effect of LPM closure, prompt and unanimous support of public health practitioners and clinicians for this necessary intervention will be paramount to protect human health from the... threat of avian influenza A H7N9 virus,” they wrote.
Avian flu viruses have been around for a very long time in wild birds, but they do not generally cause disease in humans, though in rare cases they mutate and jump species.
Strains of the H5, H7 and H9 avian influenza subtypes have caused human infections, mainly following direct contact with infected poultry. None of the strains have yet mutated to become easily transmissible from person to person — the epidemiologist’s nightmare.
The best-known strain is the H5N1 virus which has caused 633 confirmed flu cases in humans in 15 countries from 2003 to July this year. Of these, 377 died — a death rate of about 60 percent.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS