Second restaurant shut after cholera discovery

The second restaurant in a week was ordered shut and disinfected yesterday after cholera was found in its fish tank.

Hygiene officers ordered the temporary closure of the restaurant at Kwun Tong's Lok Wah Estate, where it served Chiu Chow-style food and seafood.

The discovery of Vibrio cholerae organisms in water samples from the restaurant's tanks followed last Thursday's closure of the Manchu Chinese Seafood Hotpot Restaurant in Mongkok.

A spokesman for the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department said the latest restaurant closure was not related to any of the 17 cholera cases detected in the SAR this year. He said the water sample was taken from the Kwun Tong restaurant last Thursday during a department inspection. Health officers went there yesterday afternoon to disinfect the premises.

'The food stall will remain closed until disinfection is completed to our satisfaction. It will be reopened when we are satisfied with the overall hygienic conditions of the premises,' he said.

The spokesman said the incidents were isolated and there was no sign the problem was widespread. He said cholera could not survive high temperatures and was killed by thorough cooking.

Liberal Party legislator Tommy Cheung Yu-yan last night called on the Government to carry out research on the effectiveness of using ultraviolet and ozone treatments to clean fish tanks.