Shanghai :Markets shut‚ birds culled to curb H7N9

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

SHANGHAI: Shanghai ordered all live poultry markets in the city closed today after culling more than 20,000 birds to curb the spread of the H7N9 flu virus, which has killed six people in China.

The latest fatality was a 64-year-old farmer who died in Huzhou, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, local officials said according

to the state Xinhua news agency.

He was the second person from Zhejiang to die from the bird flu strain, with the other four fatalities in Shanghai, China’s commercial hub.

The number of confirmed infections rose to 16 with two new ones in neighbouring Jiangsu, and a seven-year-old girl was quarantined in Hong Kong for tests after she returned from Shanghai and showed flu-like symptoms, officials said.

Shanghai is China’s biggest city with a population of 23 million people and municipal government spokesman Xu Wei said its live poultry markets were being shuttered temporarily for “public safety” purposes, and all trade in live poultry banned.

The moves came after the virus was found in pigeon samples from the Huhuai market in Shanghai, officials said, where a total of 20,536 chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons had been slaughtered.

Local television showed men in protective clothing and facemasks entering the market in the city’s western suburbs during the night, and dozens of empty birdcages. Today, the entrance to the poultry section was concealed with wooden boards and sealed off with plastic tape, with a police car parked nearby and white disinfectant powder sprinkled in the street. Two staff members at the market told AFP the slaughter was completed overnight, but one added: “Of course, I’m worried.”

Consumers in the city snapped up banlangen, a traditional Chinese medicine for colds made from the roots of the woad plant, used as a blue dye from ancient times. “We sold out. People are buying it one after another. Everyone is afraid of bird flu,” said an employee at the SPH drugstore in downtown Shanghai. The World Health Organisation has played down fears over the H7N9 strain, saying there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

Shanghai city health official Wu Fan also said today there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. One person who had been in close contact with a victim had shown flu-like symptoms but tested negative for H7N9, she said.