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Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a stand-up media session before a luncheon today (June 12):
Reporter: (about vaccine)
Secretary for Food and Health: We are looking at three possible causes for this contamination of the environment. The first is whether there is any change of the virus. We have excluded this because we have gone through very detailed studies of the genetic sequencing of the virus. The second is whether the immunity status of the chickens has changed so that they are carrying the virus and yet they do not have any symptoms. Our scientists have also studied the serological status, that is the antibody level of chickens and also the droppings of those chickens in the past period on a regular basis. We did not find any abnormality in there. These two possibilities can be ruled out, but we are still going to do some more research on the possibility of the immunity of chickens.
Reporter: (about vaccine)
Secretary for Food and Health: That means whether the vaccine is providing sufficient protection so that the chickens would not contain the virus or shed any virus. This is something that we have done a bit of research so far, but we would like to repeat again.
Reporter: (about resistance to vaccine)
Secretary for Food and Health: If it happens in chickens, we will be able to demonstrate that the resistance of the chickens is actually related to their antibody level. We have not found any lowering of the antibody level of those chickens. We have not found any shedding of virus from those chickens in the farms either.
Reporter: Is it time for Hong Kong to have a centralised slaughterhouse?
Secretary for Food and Health: According to our statistics, the chickens sold by the affected stores for the three additional stores is around about a thousand chickens, and for the three affected markets are about 4,000 chickens. So I think anybody perhaps been in contact with those chickens or in those markets in case they have any health problem, any symptoms of upper respiratory infection, appeal to them that they should contact doctors as soon as possible. We have also made an appeal to the public if they have any history of contacting chickens in a market or anywhere and if they have similar symptoms they should inform the doctor as early as possible so we can trace whether they are affected by H5N1. Regarding the issue of central slaughtering, it is always the government's position that we should have a central slaughtering of chickens in the medium and long term. We will be working very hard on choosing a site, we have already identified a site in that territory. At the same time, we have also been doing a number of feasibility studies, both on the business side, as well as on the environment.
Reporter: It seems that retailers not really like the idea, what kind of suggestions...
Secretary for Food and Health: As I said earlier on, it seems that the licensing conditions of the retailers as well as the measures that are being taken, both by the retailers and also the inspections that we have done are insufficient in maintaining the safety of the environment and market, so we will be discussing with the trade on how to improve that so we can have a cleaner environment and also a faster turnover of the chickens in the market. One of the suggestions given by experts is to slaughter all chickens at the end of the day so that we do not have an opportunity to build up the virus load in the environment.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Thursday, June 12, 2008
Issued at HKT 19:23
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