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Hong Kong destroys poultry from China after bird flu found

HONG KONG - Authorities in Hong Kong began destroying 15,000 chickens at a poultry market Wednesday and suspended imports from mainland China after some birds were found to be infected with bird flu.

The market in Cheung Sha Wan in the Kowloon district will be closed and imports suspended for 21 days, Health Secretary Ko Wing-man announced.

Some chickens at the market supplied by a farm in Guangdong province on the mainland tested positive for the H7 variety of flu, Ko said. Authorities are most concerned about preventing the spread of the H7N9 strain, but Ko gave no indication whether that was found.

Authorities will "arrange to cull all the live poultry, around 15,000 in total" at the market, Ko said at a news conference early Wednesday, according to a transcript distributed by his agency.

British, Dutch slaughter poultry to fight bird flu

LONDON - Chickens were being slaughtered in the Netherlands and Britain was preparing to kill ducks after two cases of bird flu were discovered in Europe — but officials insisted Monday that the risk to public health was very low.

British officials said they were investigating a case of the H5 bird flu virus in northern England, but noted it's not the more dangerous H5N1 strain. They said all 6,000 ducks at a breeding farm in the Driffield area of East Yorkshire will be killed and a restriction zone was being set up to prevent further spread of the infection. Tests were also being carried out at nearby farms.

The UK government food agency said there is no risk to the food chain and British Chief Veterinary Officer Nigel Gibbens told BBC the risk of the disease spreading is probably quite low.

It was the first bird flu outbreak in Britain in six years, officials said. A government spokeswoman said Britain has a "strong track record of controlling and eliminating previous outbreaks of avian flu in the UK."

Flu shot in pregnancy recommended: study

TORONTO - Pregnant women who get the flu shot are less likely to have premature or low-birth-weight infants compared to those who don't get vaccinated, a study has found, confirming the results of earlier research.

Yet researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, where the study was conducted, say vaccination rates among pregnant women remain "disappointingly low."

Their study, published in Monday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, points out that during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, 64 per cent of pregnant women in Nova Scotia rolled up their sleeves for the flu shot.

Since then, the annual inoculation rate for that segment of the province's population has averaged about 16 per cent, despite public health recommendations that women get vaccinated, no matter which trimester of pregnancy they are in.

Bird flu strain infects human for 1st time

LONDON - A strain of bird flu that scientists thought could not infect people has shown up in a Taiwanese woman, a nasty surprise that shows scientists must do more to spot worrisome flu strains before they ignite a global outbreak, doctors say.

On a more hopeful front, two pharmaceuticals separately reported encouraging results from human tests of a possible vaccine against a different type of bird flu that has been spreading in China since first being identified last spring, which is feared to have pandemic potential.

The woman, 20, was hospitalized in May with a lung infection. After being treated with Tamiflu and antibiotics, she was released. One of her throat swabs was sent to the Taiwan Centres for Disease Control. Experts there identified it as the H6N1 bird flu, widely circulating in chickens on the island.

The patient, who was not identified, worked in a deli and had no known connection to live birds. Investigators couldn't figure out how she was infected. But they noted several of her close family and friends also developed flu-like symptoms after spending time with her, though none tested positive for H6N1. The research was published online Thursday in the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

Taiwan watching travellers after H7N9 bird flu case

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan heightened surveillance of travellers from China on Thursday after authorities confirmed the island's first case of a new deadly strain of bird flu.

The 53-year-old man became ill with fever after returning from a visit to the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu on April 9, the Centers for Disease Control said.

He twice tested negative for H7N9 but eventually tested positive Wednesday after his condition deteriorated, CDC official Chang Feng-yi said.

He said Thursday authorities will step up screening of visitors from China at airports for signs of fever and other ailments. News reports said Taiwanese airlines will suspend providing chicken and ducks that come from China.

WHO: New flu passes more easily from bird to human

BEIJING, China - A new strain of bird flu that emerged in China over the past month is one of the "most lethal" flu viruses so far, worrying health officials because it can jump more easily from birds to humans than the one that started killing people a decade ago, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday.

Scientists are watching the virus closely to see if it could spark a global pandemic but say there is little evidence so far that it can spread easily from human to human.

WHO's top influenza expert, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, told reporters at a briefing in Beijing that people seem to catch the H7N9 virus from birds more easily than the H5N1 strain that began ravaging poultry across Asia in 2003. The H5N1 strain has since killed 360 people worldwide, mostly after contact with infected fowl.

Health experts are concerned about H7N9's ability to jump to humans, and about the strain's capacity to infect birds without causing noticeable symptoms, which makes it difficult to monitor its spread.

China's bird flu response shows new openness

SHANGHAI - After a new and lethal strain of bird flu emerged in Shanghai two weeks ago, the government of China's bustling financial capital responded with live updates on a Twitter-like microblog. It's a starkly different approach than a decade ago, when Chinese officials silenced reporting as a deadly pneumonia later known as SARS killed dozens in the south.

The contrast shows a new, though still evolving, openness in China that was learned from the SARS debacle, which devastated the government's credibility at home and abroad. It also reflects the demands of a more prosperous and educated citizenry for information and its use of social media to get it.

"Publicize information to prevent 'bird flu panic,'" read the headline of a recent front-page commentary in the People's Daily, the ruling Communist Party's newspaper, that urged government departments to release information quickly about an outbreak that has killed 10 and sickened 28 others.

The latest death, of a 74-year-old man, was reported in Shanghai, where two others were also reported sick. Neighboring Jiangsu province reported two more people infected Thursday.

China bird flu mutates, might infect mammals

BEIJING, China - In a worrisome sign, a bird flu in China appears to have mutated so that it can spread to other animals, raising the potential for a bigger threat to people, scientists said Wednesday.

So far the flu has sickened nine people in China and killed three. It's not clear how they became infected, but there's no evidence that the virus is spreading easily among people.

But the virus can evidently move through poultry without making them sick, experts said, making it difficult to track the germ in flocks.

The findings are preliminary and need further testing.

Often elderly are victims, but 100 kids die of flu on average each year; 20 so far this season

NEW YORK, N.Y. - How bad is this flu season, exactly? Look to the children.

Twenty flu-related deaths have been reported in kids so far this winter, one of the worst tolls this early in the year since the government started keeping track in 2004.

But while such a tally is tragic, that does not mean this year will turn out to be unusually bad. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, and it's not yet clear the nation will reach that total.

The deaths this year have included a 6-year-old girl in Maine, a 15-year Michigan student who loved robotics, and 6-foot-4 Texas high school senior Max Schwolert, who grew sick in Wisconsin while visiting his grandparents for the holidays.

With crowded ERs and some cancelled surgeries, flu reminds Canada what it can do

TORONTO - In some places it's surging, in others it's plateaued, and in other parts of the country it may actually be on the wane.

But in most parts of Canada this winter, influenza has been reminding Canadians what a real flu season feels like.

Emergency departments are reporting heavy traffic. Some hospitals have cut back on surgeries. Sales of antiviral drugs have been strong enough to create the possibility of a shortage, prompting the federal government to lend stores of Tamiflu from the national emergency drug stockpile back to the manufacturer, Roche Canada.

After a couple of years of ho-hum flu seasons, some people may be tempted to cast this year as the worst in a decade. This early in the winter it's too soon to predict what the final picture will look like. But it is fair to say this is an active year, flu-wise.

Flu season surging just in time for the holidays in many parts of the country

For a Winnipeg medical team, it’s an act of compassion. For the poor people of mountainous Nicaragua -- where they must be mobile to survive -- the knees are a chance at a new and better life. Free Press photojournalist Phil Hossack accompanied the team of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and other medical staff from Concordia Hospital to Managua to tell their story.

Crying over needles? Fall flu shot available for kids in nasal spray

EDMONTON - Alberta health officials say for the first time children will be able to get a seasonal flu vaccine through nasal spray instead of needles.

Children between two and 17 are eligible for FluMist, but those with respiratory problems such as asthma are advised to get the shot instead.

Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. James Talbot, says studies show the spray is more effective for children.

But he says it's still best for adults to get injections.

With flu season looming, study finds white, black Canadians get fewer flu shots

TORONTO - With summer in its dying days and flu season looming, public health programs countrywide are gearing up for the push to inject millions of doses of flu vaccine into arms.

A new study suggests those arms are more likely to belong to Canadians of a variety of ethnic backgrounds — Filipino, Japanese, Chinese and southeast Asian among them — than to Canadians who describe themselves as white or black.

In fact, of 12 ethnic groups, all were more likely to get a flu shot than white or black Canadians. Those two groups were essentially equally likely — or unlikely — to agree to get a flu shot, the study found.

Lead study author Susan Quach admits the results came as a surprise.