Shanghai Port On Full Alert For Bird Flu
Bernama, 21 Oct 2005

SHANGHAI, Oct 21 (Bernama) -- East China's Shanghai is increasing surveillance against a possible pandemic outbreak by sterilizing soles of all passengers entering the port by sea, land and air, the Chinese News Agency, XINHUA, reported Friday.

The municipal quarantine authorities have destroyed and banned imports of poultry products from bird flu-stricken countries and regions.

Since February last year, Shanghai's quarantine authority has established a leadership team for prevention and control of highly pathogenic avian influenza and improved a reporting system for the fowl epidemic, the news agency quoted officials with the authorities as saying.

Besides poultry products, the quarantine organ has intensified spot check on other imports to Shanghai. Poultry and other animal products from non-bird-flu-stricken areas are now also under its strict scrutiny.

The officials said in the past nine months, Shanghai intercepted 35,425 kilogrammes of poultry products from bird-flu-stricken areas, and monitored 993 batches of such products from the United States, Brazil and Argentina, with negative results for all viral tests.

In the January-September period, the local quarantine authority slew all birds and destroyed related products aboard vessels that entered Shanghai for dismantlement or maintenance.

The organ supervised environmental-friendly treatment of wastes and sewage from all sorts of inbound transport vehicles and forbade the wastes and sewage from being discarded randomly. All containers from bird-flu-stricken areas have been sterilized at the port.

Related reports said China is pondering measures such as stockpiling emergency materials including anti-flu druge Tamiflu, in case the bird-flu virus mutates into a strain which is transmitted from human to human.

The latest alarm was in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where about 2,600 birds died following a recent outbreak caused by the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a regular press conference that China is concerned about the epidemic and has set up a nationwide monitoring network and pre-schemes for emergency.-- BERNAMA