China tightens checks on Sars and bird flu

China increased its precautions against the twin health threats of Sars and bird flu today as it entered its peak travel period ahead of the Lunar New Year.

Vice Premier Wu Yi, who is also health minister, called on quarantine, railway and aviation officials to work together to prevent the possible spread of Sars, as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel home to rural villages for the holiday Thursday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

In the fight against bird flu, authorities were searching markets for any poultry from flu-hit countries and publicly burned 800 pigs smuggled in from Vietnam, state media said.

There have been no cases of bird flu reported in China, World Health Organisation spokesman Roy Wadia said today. The disease has killed at least four people in neighbouring Vietnam.

China has had three confirmed cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome this season, although WHO has urged further testing of two of the patients to ensure they did in fact have Sars and not just a version of the common cold.

Of the three patients, two have recovered and returned home, while the third is in stable condition in a hospital, state media said.

But while Sars has thus far not caused a public health threat this season, authorities were taking few chances. Last year’s Sars outbreak was spread by travellers to dozens of countries and killed 774 people worldwide before subsiding in June. In China, 349 people died.

“No effort should be spared in guarding against the spread of the disease,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. “We mustn’t be caught off guard or relax our vigilance.”

The central government has said anyone with a fever would be prohibited from boarding a train.

China yesterday confirmed its second and third cases of SARS, upgrading them from “suspected Sars.”

One patient was a waitress who had worked at a restaurant that served civet cat, a suspected source of the disease.

To fight bird flu, another ailment believed to spread to humans from animals, China has banned chicken imports from flu-hit Vietnam, Japan and South Korea.

While pigs haven’t been implicated, authorities in south China yesterday publicly burned 800 pigs that had been smuggled in from Vietnam to take advantage of higher livestock prices in China.

It wasn’t clear if the dramatic operation was intended strictly as a health precaution or more as a warning to smugglers. Sunday newspapers printed pictures of cages of pigs set alight, the animals apparently already dead.

“We detected the smuggled pigs when inspecting villages to guard against the outbreak of bird flu,” said Li Yuebu, director of the anti-smuggling office in the southern city of Nanning, near Vietnam, as quoted by Xinhua.

In the Chinese capital, officials fanned out to poultry markets to inspect birds and quarantine certificates, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.