Hong Kong hospitals were on the lookout yesterday for a mystery illness that has killed nine people in China's southern Sichuan province.
Twenty people were hospitalized with the unknown disease from June 24 to July 21 in the city of Ziyang, the Hong Kong government said Saturday, citing information from Sichuan officials.
Nine died, one was discharged and 10 are still in the hospital, including six in critical condition, according to the Hong Kong government. World Health Organization spokesman Bob Dietz said the cases may be linked to farmers who have slaughtered either pigs or sheep. He said the Chinese government has dispatched a team to investigate.
PHOTO: AP
The Chinese news Web site Sina.com reported Saturday the people infected suffered from symptoms like fever, lack of energy, vomiting, bleeding from blood vessels beneath the skin, and shock. Dietz said the disease doesn't appear to be spreading.
Hong Kong's Hospital Authority has asked its hospitals to notify health authorities of any patients with similar symptoms, spokesman Raymond Lo said yesterday.
Hong Kong is wary of diseases spreading here from China since severe acute respiratory syndrome was brought to the territory by a Mainlander in 2003.
The disease eventually killed 299 people in Hong Kong.
pigs destroyed
Meanwhile, Indonesia became the first known country yesterday to destroy pigs in its effort to contain the rapid spread of bird flu, which has killed at least 57 people across Asia and devastated poultry stocks.
Plans to slaughter 200 swine, however, were sharply reduced as authorities wrangled over the best way to battle the deadly disease.
Eighteen pigs that tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus were killed on two farms on the outskirts of Jakarta. After being injected with drugs that rendered them unconscious, they were loaded onto trucks, taken to a field and thrown into a fire.
Healthy animals escaped the culls, despite Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono's earlier pledge to kill all birds and pigs on farms hit by the deadly avian influenza.
"If we kill all, healthy and sick, it guarantees nothing because the virus can be spread in the air," he told reporters at an event that appeared to be orchestrated largely for television cameras. "We only want to kill those that are infected."
The farms targeted yesterday were 15km from the home of three family members who earlier this month became the first people in Indonesia to die of bird flu, a 38-year-old foreign ministry worker and his two daughters, 9 and 1.
Authorities still do not know where they contracted the disease -- they had no known contact with birds -- but decided to start with the closest point of infection, Tangerang.
`a mixing bowl'
Apriyantono said farmers who lost pigs to the government's culling campaign would be compensated, most of them with cows.
In May, an Indonesian scientist said he found H5N1 in blood samples taken from pigs, which are genetically similar to people and often carry the human influenza virus, findings that were somewhat controversial.
Experts worry that pigs infected with both bird flu and its human equivalent could act as a "mixing bowl," resulting in a more dangerous, mutant virus that might spread to people more easily -- and from person to person.
Preparing for the worst, Indonesia's health ministry warned last week that 44 hospitals nationwide had been put on alert to receive and treat bird flu patients.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS