Hong Kong Sends Team to China to Probe Suspected Bird-Flu Case

(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong will send a team of doctors and veterinarians to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen to probe a suspected human case of bird flu, a day after a resident of the border town was reported to have the virus.

A 31-year-old truck driver is in critical condition in Shenzhen People's Hospital, Hong Kong's government said late yesterday. Initial test results reported by a local laboratory were positive for the H5N1 avian influenza strain. Confirmatory tests by a Beijing laboratory are pending.

The Hong Kong team will be made up of public health doctors, veterinarians and food safety officials.

``This case is very special because the patient is in Shenzhen, which is very close to Hong Kong,'' said Teresa Choi, principal medical and health officer for the Hong Kong government's Centre for Health Protection.

The center's officials will meet Hong Kong hospital officials later today to discuss increasing surveillance. Border surveillance has already been intensified.

Shenzhen is about 40 minutes away by rail from Hong Kong and thousands of people commute between the cities daily. Hong Kong authorities are screening travelers arriving by land for fever, and will step up health inspections of poultry imported from the mainland, the city's government said in an e-mail late yesterday.

The public should be ``vigilant'' because of the large flow of people between the two regions, the government said.

Governments worldwide are being urged to prepare for a deadly flu pandemic amid concern over the H5N1 strain, which has killed 128 of the 225 people known to have been infected since 2003. China has reported 18 human H5N1 cases, 12 of them fatal.

Human cases provide an opportunity for H5N1 to mutate into a pandemic form that may kill millions of people, according to the World Health Organization.

Health Alert Unchanged

The suspected case hasn't raised the local health alert level, K.K. Tang, a spokesman for the city's health department, said earlier today. Hong Kong, with a population of about 7 million people, hasn't had any human H5N1 cases since early 2003.

Shenzhen and Hong Kong are linked by a commuter railway, public bus services, ferries and a land crossing for trucks and private cars. Many people in Hong Kong's visit Shenzhen for shopping, sometimes daily, and school children and workers commute between the two cities.

The man being treated for avian flu was hospitalized after developing fever and pneumonia on June 3. He hadn't visited Hong Kong, Tang said. He may have visited a local market where live chickens were on sale before becoming ill, Tang said.

No outbreaks of H5N1 among poultry had been reported in the area where the man lived prior to his illness, said Roy Wadia, a Beijing-based spokesman for the World Health Organization. None of the people in contact with the man since his illness are reported to have fallen ill, he said.