January 8, 2007

Hong Kong: Dead wild bird tests positive for H5N1

A dead wild bird found in Hong Kong recently has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, the government said Saturday (Jan 6).

Test results on the dead, scaly-breasted munia recovered from the Causeway Bay shopping and residential district on New Year's Eve were announced in a statement issued by Hong Kong's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.

Hong Kong aggressively tests for bird flu because it first appeared here 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.

Bird flu has killed or prompted the culling of millions of birds across Asia since 2003. But Hong Kong hasn't reported a major outbreak since 1997.