Via Shanghai Daily: Chicken farm flu outbreak ‘under control’. Excerpt:
The Chinese mainland’s first outbreak of H5N2 bird flu, which killed 4,000 birds at a chicken farm, is under control, authorities in a northern province said yesterday.
The chickens died at the Hufeng farm in Baoding City in Hebei Province last Tuesday, the local government said.
A total of 125,700 chickens were culled on Thursday and safely disposed of and surrounding areas have been sterilized, it said. Areas within 3 kilometers of the farm have been cordoned off.
Eleven people found to have been in contact with the poultry have been isolated but none has been confirmed as infected with the virus, officials said.
On Thursday night, more than 1,000 paramilitary and police officers were sent to the farm to cull the birds. On Saturday, the state lab for bird flu confirmed it was the H5N2 strain that had caused the initial deaths.
The privately run Hufeng chicken farm was established in 1992. The chickens that had died from the H5N2 virus were bought in late November.
The outbreak was the first of its kind on the Chinese mainland. Taiwan reported infections of H5N2 in chickens in March 2012, triggering a cull of 58,000 poultry.
In other bird flu cases, Jiangxi Province in east China confirmed a human case of the H10N8 strain last Wednesday.
136 people infected
And earlier last week, four new human cases of H7N9 bird flu were confirmed in south China’s Guangdong Province.
China reported the world’s first human case of H7N9 bird flu infection in March.
As of Friday, a total of 136 people have been confirmed as infected with the virus, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said.
Of those infected, 45 had died, representing a fatality rate of 33.1 percent. No cases have been reported in other countries so far.
