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Officials confident quick action will stop bird flu outbreak from spreading

All poultry in Panyu county's Sixian village, the site of a new mainland outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, would be culled within a few days, a Guangzhou official said yesterday.

Vice-Mayor Su Zequn said more than 100,000 birds would be destroyed to prevent the virus from spreading.

'We would rather kill 10,000 ducks wrongfully than miss even one [that  has the virus],' Mr Su said.

About 130 workers started the cull yesterday morning, catching and bagging all poultry in a three-square-kilometre area and burying the birds in deep pits, Mr Su said.

Dead ducks were first reported on September 5 and nearly 10,000 had died by last Wednesday. Panyu officials  culled about 32,600 ducks that had been in contact with the dead birds and police  quarantined the affected area on Thursday.

Tissue samples were sent to the Ministry of Agriculture late last week and the cause of the birds' deaths was confirmed to be the H5N1 bird flu virus yesterday afternoon.

Bird flu experts said the public should not be worried because it was an isolated outbreak and was unlikely to  widen. 'I do not think the public need to worry about the case at all,' the director of the Guangdong Animal Vaccination Centre, Yu Yedong , said.

The province  implemented an emergency response plan, which was developed several years ago, as soon as tests confirmed the presence of H5N1 bird flu, he said.

'We had a similar experiences in 2004 when bird flu was found and Guangzhou will be sure to control the spread of the virus this time,' he said.

All ducks that died in the outbreak were reported to have been vaccinated but Mr Yu insisted the vaccine was effective.

He said it took at least 21 days after injection for vaccines to create enough antibodies to have any protective effect. Two-thirds of the victims of this outbreak  were ducklings that died during the first to fifth day after vaccination, 'which means the antibodies in their bodies were not strong enough to protect them in time'.

He said all the dead ducks were broilers,  which only took 30 to 40 days from hatching to be sent to the market. This meant there was only time for one vaccination, so the virus  likely had a better chance to attack the ducklings, he said.

'For breeding and egg-laying ducks we can give two vaccine injections because they have a longer time on the farm,' he said.

To enhance birds' immunity, Guangdong has asked all poultry farms to give extra vaccinations and Mr Yu said the province's vaccination rate was almost 100 per cent.

He said there was no clue as to the source of the virus and whether it had mutated or not. 'We are not responsible for answering this question and all of us have to wait for the Ministry of Agriculture's test results,' he said.

A Guangzhou peddler selling ducks in the downtown Jianshe village market said the deaths of the Panyu ducks had only slightly affected his business.

Human fatalities

The mainland has reported 25 human cases of bird flu since 2003. The number of fatal cases is 16



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