Tag: quarantine

France says 10 million birds culled in massive flu outbreak

AFP Staff Writers – March 23, 2022

Some 10 million ducks, chickens and other poultry have been culled in France since November in one of the most widespread outbreaks of bird flu in years, the agriculture ministry said Wednesday.

The country has been hit by several epidemics since 2015 but they have mainly been contained to the southwest where ducks are bred for the lucrative foie gras liver pate industry.

But this winter has seen the virus spread farther north along the western Atlantic coast to the Pays de la Loire region, spreading rapidly among farms in the Vendee, Loire-Atlantique and Maine-et-Loire departments since late February.

Nearly 1,000 sites have reported cases, including at least 450 in the Vendee, considered strategic by the ministry because it is home to many farms that raise chickens and other birds exclusively for breeding.

However the situation appears to be “stabilising” in the southwest, the ministry said.

Quarantine measures have been taken against the virus and farmers are compensated by the government for losses that can run into the millions of euros.

The H5N1 virus has been detected in 34 European countries this winter, with northern Italy hit particularly hard, prompting authorities to cull 18 million birds so far.

Officials say there is no risk to humans from eating products that may have been produced from infected birds.

https://www.seeddaily.com

China’s Unproven Antiviral Solution: Quarantine of 40 Million

Bloomberg – January 24, 2020

(Bloomberg) — China’s lockdown of Wuhan and its surrounding areas to contain the coronavirus represents the first large-scale quarantine in modern times.

The effectiveness of attempting to cordon off the epicenter of the disease — an area of roughly 40 million people — will probably be scrutinized far into the future.

“The containment of a city hasn’t been done in the history of international public health policy,” said Shigeru Omi, who headed the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Region during the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s. “It’s a balance between respecting freedom of movement of people, and also prevention of further disease and public interest. It’s not a simple sort of thing; it’s very complex.”

Aside from raising questions about its probable effectiveness and implications for human rights, a quarantine could cause panic, public health experts said. The government will also have to ensure supplies of food, water and medical materials.

Some argue the authorities may have had no choice, since certain patients appear to have milder symptoms that can go undetected, allowing them to unwittingly spread the disease. Saturday also marks the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, when more than 500 million trips by plane and rail may be taken within and out of China.

Restricting the movement of those who may be carriers of diseases is an approach that goes as far back as the 14th century, though historically it was used mainly in smaller cities or neighborhoods. In China, the city of Wuhan alone — where the first outbound travel restriction was announced — has a population greater than any U.S. city at 11 million.

Chinese authorities first suspended all plane and train travel out of Wuhan early Thursday. The restrictions were later extended to other nearby cities.

https://www.msn.com