HK to close border if H5N1 virus mutates in China
Hong Kong’s health minister said on Thursday the city would close its border with mainland China if cases of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus were found to be transmitted person-to-person there.
Many countries have said they would close their borders in such a scenario, but the commitment is remarkable in the case of Hong Kong given that it is part of China.
"If it is proven to be human-to-human transmission, then we have to be very careful and we might have to close the border,” Health Secretary York Chow told reporters.
“But that won’t happen immediately. We need to have some time to investigate to be sure that this is a new virus and has the risk of human-to-human transmission.”
The warning came as the H5N1 widened its spread in Europe and as officials in Thailand said on Thursday that bird flu has killed a 48-year-old man in the southeast Asian nation, its first human death in a year.
In China, where there have so far been no human cases, the Foreign Ministry confirmed H5N1 in 2,600 birds at a poultry farm in Inner Mongolia, but said the outbreak had been wiped out without spreading to people.
But the fear in Hong Kong is understandable. When SARS first broke out in southern China in late 2002, Hong Kong was given no warning at all and the disease quickly spread to the city in early 2003 before moving to nearly 30 countries.
The H5N1 strain, which first surfaced in Hong Kong in 1997, re-emerged in 2003 in South Korea and has spread to Russia and Europe from southeast Asia, which the World Health Organisation says will be the most likely epicentre of any human pandemic.
It has killed over 60 people in Asia, including 41 in Vietnam, the worst-hit country.
Most human deaths have been linked to contact with sick birds, but experts say the virus could mutate at any time into a form that is more easily transmitted from person to person, and spark off a pandemic, possibly killing millions.
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