Deadly tide of birds fuels fears of bird flu cover-up (News Feature)

By Hazel Parry Feb 6, 2009, 8:29 GMT

   Hong Kong - For more than a week now a deadly tide has been washing out of China into the sea surrounding Hong Kong, bringing with it growing fears that China is in the grip of a covered-up bird-flu outbreak.

   With each day that passes, more dead birds, ducks and chickens washed up on the beaches of Hong Kong, suggesting that H5N1-infected birds may have been dumped into the China's polluted Pearl River and carried by the tide to Hong Kong waters.

   China has insisted there are no bird-flu outbreaks in China, despite eight human cases in January alone this year.

   But experts fear the tide of death washing out of southern China shows that China is once again covering up another major public health catastrophe.

   It happened before in 2003, when Beijing denied the existence of the deadly condition that became known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - or SARS - until it had crossed the border into Hong Kong where it went on to spread worldwide infecting thousands and killing hundreds.

   It happened again last year when state newspapers were initially ordered to keep quiet about a scandal which lead to many thousands of young children falling sick and seven dying after drinking baby milk tainted with the chemical melamine.

   According to the World Health Organization (WHO), China has recorded a total of 38 bird-flu cases since the disease resurfaced in 2003, including 25 deaths. Five people died in China of bird flu in January alone, two more than in the whole of 2008. Three other people were infected.

   So far more than 20 dead birds have been found on Hong Kong beaches within the last week. Six of the birds have so far tested positive for the H5N1 virus strain.

   However, there are no current outbreaks in Hong Kong nor are there any farms close to the sites where the infected birds were discovered.

   Together, these facts are causing concern in Hong Kong which boasts arguably the world's most stringent bird flu detection and prevention measures, introduced after 1997 when the former British colony witnessed the first modern incident of the virus crossing the species barrier when it infected 18 people of which six died.

   Hong Kong Secretary of Health Dr York Chow confirmed Thursday the birds are most likely to have drifted down from the Pearl River in southern China sometime over the last week. He also said that tests on the dead birds detected a strain of H5N1 previously found in southern China and not Hong Kong.

   Leading Hong Kong bird-flu expert and chairman of the Hong Kong Medical Association, Lo Wing-Lok said all these facts indicated that 'something very terrible' could be happening in China.

   'In China they are repeatedly denying any outbreak among birds but how come we have these dead birds turning up in Hong Kong?' Lo said.

   'I don't believe the source of these dead birds is Hong Kong. They are from the mainland. Possibly, they were dumped in the river or sea by farmers who have farms close to the Pearl River or sea.'

   Lo said the birds was especially worrying in the light of the high number of human cases in China this year. Taken together this could indicate the virus had changed into a form more easily transmitted from birds to humans or that the vaccine used on poultry was suppressing symptoms but not the transmission so outbreaks were going unnoticed.

   The WHO's Western Pacific spokesman Peter Cordingley said their area of concern was that many of the recent human infections in China seemed to be occurring in the absence of any infection among birds.

   'Usually we have birds serving as sentinels, telling us there is something going on in the environment. But in China, people are falling sick before any reports of sick birds. That is the wrong way round and is quite worrying,' Cordingley said.

   'Quite clearly there seems to be gaps in the surveillance of wild birds and poultry in China. We don't know what these gaps are and it may not be sloppy surveillance. But from a human health point of view, we are concerned.

   'If people are to stay safe and healthy we need to know where the virus is and the evidence is that in China at the moment, people don't know where it is.'

   That uncertainty is especially worrying for Hong Kong which shares its waters and border with China and imports millions of chickens from the mainland every year.

   'We often ask where this virus is coming from and we get no answers, Lo said. 'Seeing dead birds floating towards Hong Kong shows the virus is not being controlled at its source.

   'The only thing we can do is progressively step up our controls. But controls have their limit and we are approaching that limit. We have to now rely on China to do its part.'