March 14, 2014
Macau destroys 7,500 chickens on bird flu scare
Following the discovery of the H7-type avian influenza in live poultry for the first time in the city, Macau culled 7,500 chickens which were imported from mainland China.
The decision to slaughter the chickens comes after Hong Kong''s cull of around 20,000 chickens in January, after the deadly H7N9 bird flu virus was found in poultry also imported from China.
Macau authorities discovered a positive H7 sample in a batch of poultry imported from the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai on Wednesday (Mar 12). They did not give details on which strain of H7 flu was found.
The cull of the 7,500 chickens started at midnight and lasted six hours, a government spokeswoman said.
Images on the government website showed health officials wearing masks and white protective suits placing chicken in large plastic yellow bags at the Nam Yue Wholesales Market.
The market -- Macau''s only wholesale market for poultry imports -- will be closed for 21 days starting Thursday (Mar 13) for disinfection, the government said.
Since 1999, there has not been a human case of avian flu in the territory, a health department spokesman said.
In the neighbouring southern Chinese city of Hong Kong, the virus has claimed the lives of three men since December last year, and has infected six in total. An 18-month-old girl, in the latest case announced in the city, was confirmed to carry the virus earlier this month after having recently returned from mainland China.
Hong Kong officials said last month that in order to guard against the disease, they were extending for four months a ban on live poultry imports from mainland China.
The outbreak, which first emerged on the mainland in February 2013, has reignited fears that a bird flu virus could mutate to become easily transmissible between people, threatening to trigger a pandemic.
A total of 72 people died from the H7N9 bird flu strain in China in the first two months of this year, government figures showed, far more than 46 deaths in the whole of 2013.