万花筒 2008-12-09&12-10 香港惊现禽流感（在线收听）

Hong Kong is on bird flu alert. 80,000 chickens are being culled (1) and no poultry will be allowed in or out of the island for three weeks. Tests are being done on dead chickens from farms in the northeastern Yuen Long District. The Health Secretary says it appears they died from the H5 strain of bird flu.

As Hong Kong is now infected by bird flu, we will ban all the outputs of all chickens from our farms for 21 days and also suspend all the imports of chicken and poultry, including birds for the next 21 days. I can tell you that there will no live chicken supply for the upcoming winter festival.

For now health officials can't rule out the possibility. The virus might be the more deadly H5N1. That strain remains mainly an animal disease but has infected people before. Hong Kong has suffered two serious bouts of bird flu. Six people died in an outbreak of H5N1 in 1997, the other happened in 2001.

Susan Flory, Reuters.