China bacteria outbreak worsens, dead pigs dug up
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The number of people infected by what Chinese authorities believe is a pig-borne bacterial disease in the southwest has jumped by 14 to 131, state media said on Thursday as officials insisted the outbreak could be controlled.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it is watching developments closely, but a spokesman said the disease appears to be localized and poses no threat internationally.
China’s Ministry of Health said another three people had died from the infection, bringing the death toll in rural eastern Sichuan province to 27, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
“We have the technology and procedures to bring the disease under control,” the China Daily quoted an unidentified ministry official as saying on Wednesday.
The rise in the number of people reported infected does not necessarily mean the disease was spreading, the China Daily said, because 12 had contracted the bacteria’ infection days before but were only diagnosed on Wednesday.
Streptococcus suis, known in layman’s terms as swine flu, is endemic in swine in most pig-rearing countries in the world but human infections are rare. Although China’s state media has said no human-to-human infections have been found in Sichuan, the death toll is considered unusually high.
Swine flu is not known to have ever been passed between humans, but scientists fear it could mutate into a strain that could easily pass among people. Compounded with its deadliness, such a bug could unleash an epidemic, killing many people.
Victims were infected with the bacteria from slaughtering, handling or eating infected pigs, authorities have said.
“There is always a danger but this situation seems to be very localized,” said WHO spokesman Robert Dietz in the Philippines. “This doesn’t pose a real threat to international public health, like people in the neighboring countries becoming ill.”
“The fact that this is much larger than anything else we’re aware of historically makes us wonder just why that is.”
The unusually high mortality and reports that many of the victims died within 24 hours of showing symptoms have led some experts to wonder if it is indeed swine flu at all.
“It could be another disease altogether, it need not be Streptococcus suis because the presentation is so atypical,” said Samson Wong, a microbiology associate professor at the University of Hong Kong.
Provincial officials declined to comment, and one said they had been given instructions to only give out information on the outbreak through official news releases.
DIGGING UP DEAD PIGS
In one unconfirmed media report, the Chongqing Evening News said that police in nearby Jianyang city stopped meat dealer Chen Ping on July 21 when he cycled past with a sick pig and two dead ones on the back of his tricycle cart.
Chen was ordered to bury and disinfect the pigs he had just bought at a market, but the next day he returned to the burial site, dug out the carcasses and sold them at a market in another town for several times more than he had paid, the newspaper said.
Killing sick pigs to sell in markets or eat at home was common and farmers in affected areas had never been warned against the practice, the older brother of Chen Siyou, a man infected after slaughtering a pig, told the Chongqing Evening News.
“We’ve been doing this for years and no government official has ever come to talk to us about it,” the elder Chen said.
The China Daily said China had vaccines against the bacteria and two factories resumed production recently. The vaccine had not been produced for years due to a lack of demand, it said.
The last time swine flu broke out in China in a significant way was in 1998, when 22 people were infected, Dietz said, adding that Chinese scientists were convinced they were now dealing with the same strain of bacteria.
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