HONG KONG
- (Reuters) Hong Kong authorities have sealed off a chicken farm
while they investigate a suspected "bird flu" virus
similar to one that killed six people and led to the slaughter
of a million chickens in 1997.
Some chickens
at the farm, in the New Territories on the mainland to the north
of Hong Kong Island, had given "suspicious positive results
for H5", the government said in a statement released late
on Friday.
"The
findings indicated that the birds...might have once been exposed
to the virus but we are still looking for evidence of the presence
of the virus," assistant director of the Agriculture, Fisheries
and Conservation Department, Liu Kwei-kin, was cited as saying
at a news conference.
Twenty-four
out of 52 chicken blood samples showed traces of H5 antibodies,
according to front-page stories in Saturday's South China Morning
Post and Hong Kong iMail newspapers. There are 10,000 chickens
on the Yuen Long farm, they said.
Liu said that
there was no sign of disease outbreak in the Yuen Long birds.
Although they had tested positive for the less powerful H5 virus,
they were healthy.
"There
has been no unusual mortality in the flock," he said.
But as a precautionary
measure, the farm in Yuen Long district, had been isolated so
that more testing could be done and it has been suspended from
supplying the market, he said.
"If H5
infection is confirmed, the birds on the farm will be destroyed
to prevent possible spread of the virus," Liu said.
Three years
ago an outbreak of H5N1, a deadly strain of the avian virus, killed
six people in Hong Kong and made many others sick. About one million
chickens were slaughtered.
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