Malaysia Finds New Case of Bird Flu

Malaysia reported a second outbreak of bird flu on Monday, setting back efforts to clear the country of a virus that has killed dozens of people in Asia and ravaged its poultry industry.

Malaysia reported a second outbreak of bird flu on Monday, setting back efforts to clear the country of a virus that has killed dozens of people in Asia and ravaged its poultry industry.The head of Malaysia’s Veterinary Services Department told Reuters he was treating the virus as the deadly H5N1 strain pending test results.H5N1, blamed for 27 deaths in Asia this year, was identified in Malaysia’s first outbreak of bird flu in a village near the Thai border last month.”Based on the clinical symptoms and the earlier infection, it is very likely that (H5N1),” Hawari Hussein, director-general of the Veterinary Services Department, told a news conference.The World Health Organization says the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has a unique capacity to jump from one species to another and cause severe disease, with high mortality, in humans.It has killed 19 people in Vietnam and eight in Thailand this year and outbreaks of bird flu have hit poultry farms in several countries in Asia in recent weeks.Hawari stressed that Malaysia was still free of any human infection from the virus and his department had quickly detected the latest infection.”The chickens didn’t reach the market place. Our surveillance found them,” he said.The new case involved the death of 10 chickens and 20 birds in the same area in the northern state of Kelantan where the virus was first detected last month, the department said.About 1,200 chickens, ducks and birds within 0.6 miles of the affected area would be immediately culled, it said.Asked how long the latest outbreak could be contained, he said, “That question we don’t have an answer to, but I hope we can get rid of it.” Malaysia slaughtered about 350 birds in the Kelantan village last month in an effort to eradicate the virus.The Southeast Asian country had earlier hoped to declare itself free of the disease by September 9 when the 21-day quarantine period for the first outbreak ends.The local poultry industry has lost its main market of Singapore because of the outbreak and puts its losses at $790,000 a day. Malaysia produces 1.1 million live fowls and 16 million eggs a day, predominantly for local consumption.Singapore had been buying around 120,000 live chickens and two million eggs a day but closed the border because of the first outbreak. Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia are among the nations that have banned imports of Malaysian poultry.News of the latest bird flu case weighed on most poultry-related stocks, with chicken supplier QSR Brands falling 1.1 percent and fast-food chain operator KFC Holdings down 1.3 percent.Shares of major chicken breeder Leong Hup Holdings ended flat at 1.02 ringgit after rising as much as 3.9 percent earlier. (Additional reporting by Syed Azman and Liau Y-Sing) (Source: Reuters, Sept 2004)