HONG KONG, Oct 22: China will close its borders if it finds a single case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu there, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Saturday, while a defiant Taiwan said it would copy a patented antiviral drug.
Saving lives would be Beijing’s top priority in efforts to contain a possible outbreak of bird flu, even if it meant slowing the economy, Huang Jiefu, a vice minister of health, was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.
The World Bank said while prevention measures would cost a lot, the economic damage from a pandemic would be far worse.
Huang told health officials from China, Hong Kong and Macau on Friday that any suspected human case would be quarantined.
The World Health Organisation has said the deadly H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry in China and across much of Asia, and it may only be a matter of time before it develops the ability to pass easily from human to human.
China’s sheer size and its attempts to conceal the SARS epidemic in 2003 have prompted fears among some experts that it has had more bird flu cases than officially recorded.
Since breaking out in late 2003 in South Korea, the deadly H5N1 strain of influenza has killed more than 60 people in four Asian countries and reached as far west as European Russia, Turkey and Romania, tracking the paths of migratory birds.
Russian authorities said they had uncovered more cases of bird flu in the Urals and were investigating a suspected outbreak in the Altai region close to the Kazakh border.—Reuters
