June 18, 2007

Hong Kong bird tests positive for H5N1

The Hong Kong government has closed a bird market Sunday (Jun 17) after a bird was found carrying the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

A routine bird flu surveillance programme detected H5N1 in the fecal swab sample of a Daurian Starling, the government said in a statement Saturday night. The bird was collected on June 4 at a pet bird shop in the downtown bird garden.

The discovery came amid a spate of bird deaths from the virus around the area.

The administration has called for a closure of all pet bird shops at the bird garden for cleansing and disinfection until further notice.

The territory tests over 200 swab samples from pet bird shops for bird flu viruses each month. None of the 3,000 samples collected last year was positive.

Hong Kong aggressively tests for bird flu because of the outbreak in 1997, when the disease jumped to humans and killed six people. That prompted the government to slaughter the entire poultry population of about 1.5 million birds.