Yesterday China reported its first outbreak this year of H5N1 in a flock of poultry.
(CNN) — China has killed 13,000 birds in the country’s far northwest to control what it called an epidemic of bird flu, state media reported Tuesday.
Five hundred fowl that had died in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region tested positive for the H5N1 virus, according to China’s Ministry of Agriculture.
In late January, China confirmed its sixth case of bird flu in a human.
The ministry said at the time that, although further human bird flu cases were possible throughout China, there wouldn’t be a large-scale outbreak, state run news agency Xinhua and CCTV reported. The country also announced it was setting up a nationwide network to test for the H5N1 virus.
Perhaps they found them because they are officially “looking” for infected birds, perhaps before they were not – looking that is. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that China would turn a blind eye to outbreaks, however, it is not so difficult for me to believe they have not been reporting quite as they should.
We also had this report yesterday:
By Lucy Hornby
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Health Ministry is puzzled by eight human cases of bird flu in January which appeared independent of any known case in birds, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
Five Chinese died from H5N1 in January in far-flung regions without any reported presence of the virus in birds on the mainland.
Dead birds that washed up in Hong Kong tested positive for the H5N1 strain this month, leading experts to question whether bird flu is widely present but undetected in China.
“We see the result, but not the cause. We don’t know where it has come from, but people have been infected. When people are infected, in theory it should be present in birds,” spokesman Mao Qunan told reporters.
Later on Tuesday, the Ministry of Agriculture said there had been an H5N1 outbreak among poultry in Hotan, in the far western region of Xinjiang, which had killed 519 birds.
Authorites have culled another 13,218 birds and the outbreak is under control, the official Xinhua news agency said.
China has reported one case of bird flu detected through sampling this winter, in eastern Jiangsu province. China conducts random sampling and culls birds when the virus is found.
Last week, the Agriculture Ministry defended its vaccination campaign as having successfully prevented widespread incidence of bird flu.
The Ministry of Health has also urged hospitals to increase efforts at early detection and testing for bird flu, Mao said.
Some people may be genetically more susceptible to bird flu than others, he added.
The virus is present in some vector or another in China, the eight officially acknowledged human infections this year testify to that fact. Though not officially acknowledged, it is believed that H5N1 is endemic in at least parts of China.
A last report yesterday, though not directly related to avian influenza, once again highlights an ongoing problem in China, counterfeit or contaminated products:
Chinese police seize another man linked to deadly diabetes drug
BEIJING, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) — Chinese police have seized another man accused of distributing a fake diabetes drug that killed two patients and hospitalized nine others in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The drug, sold under the brand “Tang Zhi Ning Jiao Nang,” was found to contain six times the normal dose of glibenclamide, a chemical used to help lower blood sugar. Taking a dosage of this size is potentially fatal. The two deaths occurred in January this year.
Fu Qichang, a chief suspect in the case, was captured by the police in eastern China’s Shandong Province late on Sunday, Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman for the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), revealed at a press conference Wednesday.
Fu allegedly produced the fake drug in October/November 2008 in Linyi city of Shandong Province with Li Dong, another chief suspect in the case, and sold the drug to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the northeastern Liaoning Province.
Has China experienced an “outbreak” of substandard or fake H5N1 poultry vaccination? A question I’ve asked several times previously, though one I cannot answer. Frankly, it is the option I hope is behind the recent human infections; at least a substandard or counterfeit vaccine is easily remedied, whereas an ineffective vaccine because of viral evolution or asymptomatically infected chicken is not so easily or rapidly overcome.
It is hoped that whatever is causing the human infections will soon be brought to light and dealt with, given China’s expertise and technological ability, certainly feasible – and expected.
