Beijing’s live poultry markets ordered to close

AUTHORITIES ordered all live poultry markets in China’s capital Beijing to close immediately and went door-to-door seizing chickens and ducks from private homes, as the government dramatically beefed up its fight against bird flu yesterday.

Beijing announced that six million birds had been slaughtered around the site of China’s most recent bird flu outbreak, and the World Health Organisation has been asked to help in the reopened investigation of the country’s possible first human cases of the virus.

Beijing on Sunday reopened an investigation into whether bird flu killed a 12-year-old girl and caused two people to fall ill last month in cases originally ruled not to be H5N1.