A two-month-old girl is in a hospital isolation ward after being confirmed with H9N2 bird flu yesterday - the day live chicken sales resumed after a 21-day ban sparked by an outbreak of the much more serious H5N1 strain among birds at a Yuen Long farm.
The baby, who is believed to have contracted the usually mild disease in Shenzhen, where she lives with her parents and grandmother, is in stable condition in Tuen Mun Hospital.
Her parents and grandmother are under a week's medical surveillance at the family's Hong Kong home while tests continue to see the virus has mutated into a potentially more dangerous form. Staff at the hospital have been put on preventive doses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu.
The case - the fifth such infection in Hong Kong since 1999 - worries the Hospital Authority because it comes in a peak period for flu infections.
The baby, who was born in Tuen Mun Hospital, was admitted on December 22 with an upper respiratory infection, though she did not have a fever. Tests showed she had influenza A. She was discharged a day later and returned to Shenzhen.
She was readmitted on Monday after a doctor in Shenzhen found she had poor appetite and a low blood count, unrelated to the flu - from which she has recovered. The girl is now being treated for suspected leukaemia.
