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Following is a transcript (English portion) of remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, at a stand-up media session at the Legislative Council Building today (June 14):
Reporter: (on the source of infection)
Dr Chow: According to the history given to us, this patient is a 31-year-old truck driver. He has no specific history of contact with any poultry, but has eaten chicken bought from the market. He also has shopped in a wet market which also sells poultry at the same time. His risk is not much higher than any of the ordinary citizens in Shenzhen, but the repeated cases in China, in the last three cases, one in Guangzhou, one in Shanghai and this recent one, also do not have very specific history of close contact with poultry. We feel that there might be a possibility of some silent infections among some of the poultry, particularly backyard farm poultry, they might be carrying the virus and not exhibiting any symptoms. That is the risk I think we are concerned. More importantly, we are sending our experts and staff to Shenzhen later today to understand further the details of this particular case and the patient's contact history; whether he has been in contact with any of the people who have come to Hong Kong.
Reporter: (on possibility of human-to-human transmission)
Dr Chow: No, I am talking about poultry that may be harbouring the virus and not actually exhibiting the poultry infection, like some of the outbreaks in farms that we have seen in the past. There might be poultry that are carrying the virus and running around and do not have any symptoms. If human gets in touch with them they may actually get infected without us knowing exactly the source of infection.
Reporter: Is Hong Kong going to ban the import of live chickens from Guangdong?
Dr Chow: If this case is going to be confirmed as H5N1, we might have to temporarily ban import of (live) chicken from Guangdong. As I have said earlier, the live chickens from Guangdong come from specific farms and also have a very stringent biosecurity (measure), but as far as the international standard goes, we did not actually differentiate between those exporting poultry as well as the local poultry. So to some extent, I think we have to take that there is a possibility of some chickens in the Mainland that might be harbouring the virus.
Reporter: You are talking earlier about asymptomatic chickens, so how concerned that you are about this new development?
Dr Chow: I am afraid we do not have a lot of information about this. This is the opinion of experts who look at the epidemiology of the recent outbreak in a number of countries, including China, including Indonesia. And the virus might have changed to an extent that they are being harboured by the poultry and not actually causing infection, resulting in deaths in a massive scale as the past.
Reporter: My question to you is are you concerned about this.
Dr Chow: I am concerned about this all the time, but regarding the seriousness of this one, of course, I am still confident that we have all the tools and all the mechanisms in Hong Kong to detect the first case and be able to contain it. This is most important.
Reporter: (on the overall bird flu situation)
Dr Chow: I think in general you can expect that the virus always evolve with time. So in the case of H5N1, you see that it is affecting more and more birds and in more and more areas, it's spreading to Europe, Africa and the Middle East and so on. This is a sign that it is getting more significant in terms of human health. So that is the reason why we have put in place a lot of mechanisms to detect the first case, to ensure that we are also monitoring the situation around Hong Kong. In a way, I think we have done whatever we can at the moment. We should not be panic but at the same time we should always be cautious.
Reporter: If the case is confirmed, you will ban the import of live chickens?
Dr Chow: If this case is confirmed, we will discuss with the Mainland authorities regarding the banning of chickens for another three weeks.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Issued at HKT 16:03
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