HK bird flu virus 'may mutate and harm humans'

Scientists say the latest virus strain could change and affect humans if allowed to persist, silencing those who are against the chicken cull

HONGKONG - Hongkong scientists have warned that the new bird flu virus which has prompted the ongoing culling of fowls could mutate to harm humans.

The warning was an unequivocal contrast to the government's statement that the virus in the latest outbreak is different from the H5N1 strain responsible for the 1997 outbreak in which six people died.

Still, officials have said that slaughtering chickens is a necessary precaution although the disease has not affected humans.

''Our urgent task now is to destroy all chickens and clean the markets,' Secretary for Environment and Food Lily Yam said.

She advised that Hongkongers kick the habit of buying live chickens.

'Every day, 90,000 to 100,000 chickens are consumed by Hongkongers. The eating habit must be changed,' she stressed.

The warning from local scientists that the new H5N1 virus strain found in chickens had the potential to create a flu pandemic among humans if allowed to persist and mutate could help to silence some voices against culling.

Associate professor Malik Peiris of Hongkong University said: 'At the moment we believe this virus does not have a high likelihood of attacking humans.'

The virus strain in 1997 'was a hybridisation of two parent viruses and the current strain is one of the parents', he told The Apple Daily.

Therefore, if the current H5N1 virus had been left for a longer period, it could have 'picked up gene segments from other viruses and might have become like the 1997 strain', which was harmful to humans.

Some microbiologists have observed that the H5N1 virus had already mutated three times this year but caused no harm to humans.

But once chickens started to die, there had to be action to wipe it out.

Other Asian countries have taken measures to ban or guard against poultry from Hongkong.

Authorities in nearby Macau started slaughtering poultry and suspended imports from China after cases of avian flu were detected.

Taiwan has stepped up its screening of travellers from Hongkong and asked chicken farmers to put up nets over their farms to prevent migrant birds from spreading the flu virus.

In Hongkong, 50 food-safety workers in white gowns, masks and gloves used carbon dioxide to suffocate 43,500 fowls at the main wholesale market yesterday morning. They were packed into plastic bags and taken to a dump.

It is estimated that up to 110,000 birds will be killed over the weekend during an operation expected to last two weeks.