Bird flu

China bird flu scare: 'My family and I don't dare to eat anything these days'

As H7N9 bird flu virus becomes latest food scare to sweep China, concern grows over impact on domestic meat industry

The Guardian,

11 April, 2013

Among the bustle of morning trade at Yanqing food market, one corner remains quiet. Wedged between the beef and fish counters, where traders in galoshes cheerily hack the heads off wriggling carp, the poultry stalls are boarded, their freezers taped shut. A handwritten notice from the management offers: "All chicken products have stopped being sold, sorry for any inconvenience."

As the death toll from H7N9 avian flu rises, public concern over health and food safety is growing too. The full impact on China's massive poultry sector is yet to be realised, but early indications point to widespread damage. Qiu Baoqin, of the National Poultry Industry Association, told AFP that H7N9 had been a "devastating blow".

There are 33 cases of H7N9 in Shanghai and its neighbouring provinces with nine fatalities. Microbiologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences attribute the strain to a mingling of viruses from migrating birds with those found in chickens, pigeons and ducks in the Yangtze river delta.

The new strain of avian flu has caused fried chicken sales to plummet in China, according to local reports. Photograph: EPA

In sample tests from fowl markets, 34 have proved positive for H7N9. The cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing have shut live poultry markets, culling hundreds of thousands of birds in an attempt to curb the spread

Last year China produced more than 18m tonnes of poultry, over 20% of its total meat output, according to the statistics bureau. But as markets opened after the national Qingming holiday shares in companies tied to the industry tumbled – Shandong Minhe Animal Husbandry, a poultry producer, lost 9.5% on 8 April.

In Shanghai, some schools have stopped serving chicken. McDonald's slashed the price of its McNugget meal from 36 yuan (£3.60) to 20 yuan (£2).

A chicken farm on the outskirts of Shanghai, China. Photograph: AP

"I normally buy chicken or duck several times a month, but since the bird flu I stopped buying them completely," said Ms Chen, a shopper at Yanqing street market in Shanghai.

Bird flu is the latest in a string of food scandals to hit the city of 23 million residents in recent weeks: in March, 16,000 dead pigs were found floating in tributaries supplying Shanghai's drinking water. On 1 April, 250kg of dead fish appeared in a canal in the suburbs.

The price of vegetables at Yanqing market have spiked accordingly. Chen says she will pay these premium prices rather than buy meat. "We're also avoiding pork," she said, adding: "Actually my family and I don't dare to eat anything these days."

A technician tests for the H7N9 bird flu virus at the Kunming Centre for Disease Control. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images

In a teahouse in Ninghai, a county in Zhejiang province 180 miles from Shanghai, Tu Youjin counts himself as a victim of H7N9. Tu's company, Ningbo Zhenning Poultry Breeding Limited, is a co-operative working with 150 farms in the region. It supplies Shanghai and other cities with 4m chickens a year. (Shanghai consumes 130m birds annually, mostly imported from Jiangsu, Anhui and Zhejiang, provinces where H7N9 has been found in people.)

Local officials have found no trace of flu among his fowl, but sales have dropped off a cliff. Normally, the farm sells 10,000 chickens a day, but now they are selling fewer than a dozen, he said.

"We can't even sell our eggs," said Tu. "I'm under great pressure as my company makes up the farmers' losses, most of them are elderly peasants. The government has shown concern but we haven't had any compensation so far."

A chicken peeks out from a cage as it awaits an inspection by health workers in Hong Kong. Photograph: AP

Chinese consumers are eating more meat every year – demand for chicken rose 18% in urban households between 2005 and 2011 – food scares affect consumer habits. Prices of meat and associated products rose by 2.9% on average in March, according to the statistics bureau. But pork fell by 5.5%, a slump attributed to the pigs in the river.

"In 2004, when H5N1 hit the market, it needed months to recover," said Feng Zijian, vice director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. "The impact of H7N9 will continue to be felt in the upcoming period. We just don't know how long this bird flu will last."

Bird Flu Causing Suffocation Shows Severe Spectrum of New Virus

Bird flu turned fatal for a 52- year-old Shanghai woman whose lungs became so damaged that she began to suffocate, causing her vital organs to rapidly shut down, doctors in China said.

Bloomberg,

12 April, 2013

The retiree became ill March 27, with a fever that soared as high as 40.6 degrees Celsius (105.1 Fahrenheit), doctors at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai wrote in a report on the case in the journal Emerging Microbes & Infections. Treatment with intravenous antibiotics, steroids, antibody therapy, and mechanical ventilation failed to help, and she died April 3.

Her illness, the first H7N9 avian influenza case to be described in a medical journal, highlights the seriousness of the new strain, which has sickened at least 38 people in eastern China, killing 10, in the past two months. Hospital doctors didn’t know the cause of the woman’s illness when she was admitted. Tests identified the H7N9 virus after she died.

“What they had here was a seriously ill patient and they didn’t know what was going on,” said Dominic Dwyer, director of the Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital, who reviewed the case report. “This person was so ill, they just threw everything” at her.

Three new infections were confirmed in Shanghai yesterday, along with another two in the neighboring province of Jiangsu. More than two dozen cases have been reported since the woman’s death, spurring heightened vigilance for the new strain, which the World Health Organization said doesn’t appear to be spreading from person to person.

No Tamiflu

“All fatal cases in Shanghai, including this patient, were admitted to hospital very late until the symptom of shortness of breath developed,” Feifei Yang and colleagues at Huashan Hospital wrote in the journal.

Without knowing the cause of their disease, the patients weren’t offered anti-flu drugs, such as Roche Holding AG’s (ROG) Tamiflu, which might have helped them fight the virus, especially if taken early, the authors said.

The woman’s early high fever, the late onset of respiratory problems and quick deterioration are reminiscent of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, said Nikki Shindo, a doctor and flu expert at the WHO, commenting on the report.

The woman began experiencing fevers and chills on March 27. After several days, she developed a cough, tightness in her chest and difficulty breathing. A chest X-ray showed severe pneumonitis and she was given antibiotics. Her condition worsened and a week after her symptoms began, she was hospitalized for acute respiratory distress syndrome and died the next day.

Blood tests showed cardiac enzymes that suggest the patient had a heart attack, Dwyer said, referring to the published case report. Her heart complications may have been caused by the virus directly or the effects of “trying to push blood through a very heavily congested lung,” he said.

“This is what happens with severe influenza, even if it doesn’t go outside the lung,” Dwyer said. “The big question here is, are these severe cases the tip of a very big iceberg or do most cases get really ill like this?’