**********************
Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a media session after attending radio programmes this morning (June 11):
Reporter: The latest discovery of bird flu last Saturday has exposed the loophole in the Government's bio-security measures. What are you trying to do now to prevent this from happening again?
Secretary for Food and Health: We have analysed the situation very closely since last Saturday. The four levels of control in terms of bio-security and of avian flu are in our poultry farms, in the border between the Mainland and Hong Kong, the wholesale and retail markets. We have been doing a lot of inspection in our local farms. We have sent our inspectors and veterinary specialists to the Mainland to look at some of the affected farms destined for Hong Kong. So far, we have not discovered any abnormality. The PCR tests for virus are also negative. We also look at the wholesale market. We found that the poultry in the market had shown no abnormality and the PCR tests are also negative. We also screened through the tests from all the chickens passed through Man Kam To to see whether there is any abnormality in the last few weeks. Again, we did not find anything. The only abnormality we have detected is in the retail market. The test for the retail market involved both the PCR test and egg inoculation test. PCR test will give result within a short time and that's why we have announced the result on Monday when the first batch of results came up. But there will be more results coming from the egg inoculation tests from the retail market later today. We hope that with those results coming out, we can have a clearer picture of the extent of the problem. If we found any of these additional tests showed positive results, we need to take relevant actions immediately.
Reporter: Do you admit that smuggling of chickens remains a big problem for your bureau?
Secretary for Food and Health: According to the record of the Hong Kong Customs, we have discovered four incidents of smuggling. We have also actually been able to confiscate all the chickens last year. The biggest amount we have confiscated last year is almost up to 4,000. This is actually a sizeable smuggling exercise. The most important thing when we come to counteract such activities is information and intelligence. We hope that the trade would be more honest and able to tell us about what they have received. Because most of the time we have to rely on such information before we can mount any operation.
Reporter: How do you respond to criticisms that the bureau lacks political will to cull all the chickens on Monday instead of allowing the retailers to sell the chickens?
Secretary for Food and Health: It is not a political decision. According to our guideline, if we find there is one retail site that has H5N virus avian influenza, we will just cull (chickens in) that site. But if we have more than one site, then we will have a suspicion that it would have spread. Then of course we have more justifications to cull all the chickens. Up to last Monday, there is only site that we have discovered to have H5 virus.
Reporter: (about the latest incident in Tseung Kwan O Hospital where data of patients were dumped into landfill)
Secretary for Food and Health: It is regarding a doctor who has not disposed of or put the relevant documents in the right place. I don't know the details. But it is important for any health care workers that needed to handle patients' documents involving confidentiality and privacy to lock the documents up and put them in the right place. With the electronic health care system in the Hospital Authority, there is no reason that it should keep a lot of hard copies. They need to dispose of them in a proper way, either shredding them or giving them back to the original department.
Reporter: A lot of people are concerned about whether one can get bird flu through eating. Do you have any advice for these people?
Secretary for Food and Health: According to experts, so far all the patients of avian flu did not contract the disease from eating chickens. Most of them contract the disease by contacting sick chickens, in the process of slaughtering sick chickens or in the presence of live sick chickens. All these are the scientific evidence showing that chilled and frozen chicken meat, though they might be contaminated with the virus, the risk of transmitting disease to humans is very low.
Reporter: (about egg inoculation)
Secretary for Food and Health: The egg inoculation process takes some time, a matter of three to seven days. Most of the virus can come out usually within three or four days. If the amount of virus is low, it will come out in six to seven days. Normally, our scientists will discard the egg after about a week, depending on whether there is any significant change. It is a very accurate test, considered as a benchmark test and gold standard test for H5N virus. But unfortunately it is slow. The PCR is the test that we always rely on when we suspect there is an H5 infection.
Reporter: Bird flu normally occurs in winter months, but this time it appears in summer. So how concerned are you that there is a different strain?
Secretary for Food and Health: We have done a genetic sequencing of the virus. It is the same as most of the dead birds we have discovered this winter. There is no change in the genetic sequencing of the virus this time.
(Please also refer to the Chinese session of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Issued at HKT 13:35
NNNN
