Hong Kong bird tests positive for H5N1 strain of avian flu
A sick egret found in Hong Kong last week has tested positive for the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu, the government said today.
The bird, which was collected from a park on Sunday and died the next day, was confirmed to have had the disease after several laboratory tests, the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said in a statement.
Hong Kong has occasionally found avian influenza in wild birds, but has not suffered a major outbreak of the disease lately.
Hong Kong aggressively monitors bird flu because the first documented cases of the disease in humans occurred in the territory.
An outbreak of H5N1 in 1997 killed six people, prompting the government to slaughter the entire poultry population of about 1.5 million birds.
Experts fear bird flu will mutate into a form easily transmissible among humans and spark a flu pandemic.
