Deadly bird flu cover-up in China feared

Bird flu killed more than five times as many migratory birds as previously reported in China’s west in an outbreak of apparently unprecedented scale, an agriculture official said yesterday, but he denied reports of human cases.

The official also confirmed reports that hundreds of cattle with foot-and-mouth disease have been slaughtered near Beijing since early May, and insisted the case was handled properly even though the government failed to announce it sooner.

The scarce information released previously about the twin disease outbreaks had fuelled concern about a possible cover-up and rumours on Web sites that as many as 120 people had died of the flu.

More than 1,000 bar-headed geese, great black-headed gulls and other birds found this month in the western province of Qinghai died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, said Jia Youling, director of the Veterinary Bureau of the Agriculture Ministry.

The regionwide death toll in Asia’s latest bird flu outbreak stands at 54, but no fatalities have been reported in China. Vietnam is hardest-hit, with 38 deaths.

China initially reported 178 geese found dead in Qinghai Lake in Qinghai, a vast saltwater lake that is a major transit point for migratory birds, and raised that this week to 519. Jia didn’t explain why the number had increased so sharply.

The deaths prompted the government to order all 3 million of the chickens, ducks and other poultry in Qinghai vaccinated. Nature reserves were closed to the public and farms near migration routes were told to watch for signs of disease.

Health experts worry that avian flu could be spread by birds whose migration routes cross Asia from Siberia through China and Southeast Asia to New Zealand and India.

The World Health Organisation has warned that bird flu poses a great potential threat to humans if it evolves into a virus that can easily spread from person to person.

Jia also defended China’s handling of a foot-and-mouth outbreak on a farm northwest of Beijing that health and agriculture officials previously refused to confirm.

A total of 3,771 cattle were slaughtered this month to stop four separate outbreaks in Beijing, two eastern cities and the north-western region of Xinjiang, Jia said. That included 512 on the farm in Yanqing County near Beijing.