The possibilities of regional bird flu outbreaks were "very
high" in the winter and coming spring, said Vice Minister of
Agriculture Yin Chengjie on Monday.
Yin said although the country had made major achievements in
preventing the disease, his ministry still considered the situation
was "not optimistic" as there had been cases of poultry infection
with a "relatively large contaminated area".
Yin said the critical point was to improve the disease control
in the country's southern areas.
He said the methods of poultry breeding, slaughter, delivery and
processing needed radical changes, adding the prevention measures
were not fully carried out in some regions.
He ordered local departments to step up immunization measures
ahead of the Chinese Spring Festival in early February next
year.
He urged authorities to intensify supervision over bird
activities along the border and in water areas by increasing sample
test numbers and examination frequencies.
He also required managers of live poultry markets in the
southern regions continue to implement sterilization measures on a
regular basis and "take compulsory measures" once the bird flu
virus was spotted.
Bird flu, or avian influenza, is a contagious disease of animal
origin caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and,less
commonly, pigs.
China's health authorities said on Monday that no human-to-human
transmission had been confirmed in the two human cases of bird flu
involving a father and son in the Nanjing area.
The means of transmission in these cases was unknown.
The 52-year-old man, surnamed Lu, was a native of Nanjing,
capital of Jiangsu. He developed fever and was hospitalized for
lower lobe pneumonia on Dec. 3, according to the Ministry of
Health.
Lu's son was said to have no known contact with dead poultry and
the Jiangsu Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau said earlier
last week that no bird flu epidemic had been discovered in the
province.
The father was in stable condition and showing signs of
improvement on Monday.
The latest cases bring the number of confirmed human infections
of bird flu in China to 27 since 2003, with 17 deaths.
The World Health Organization has warned that the virus could
mutate into a form that is highly infectious among humans and
easily transmissible from person to person. Such a change could
mark the start of a global outbreak.
(Xinhua News Agency December 11, 2007)