Hong Kong Reports Second Case of Deadly Bird Flu

HONG KONG — Health officials in Hong Kong late Friday reported the city’s second confirmed case of avian influenza in a week, an 80-year-old man who resides in the neighboring mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The man, who officials did not name, had spent two weeks in a hospital in Shenzhen being treated for chronic illness before arriving in Hong Kong on Tuesday and checking in to the Tuen Mun Hospital. He developed a fever on Friday morning and was immediately put into isolation, where he tested positive for the H7N9 avian influenza, Hong Kong’s Center for Health and Protection said in a statement.

It is the second case of the deadly virus in the city, after a 36-year-old Indonesian woman was confirmed on Monday to have contracted the disease after traveling across the border to Shenzhen, where she purchased a chicken, slaughtered it and then ate it.

The H7N9 influenza virus normally circulates among birds and has only recently begun to affect humans. So far it has infected 136 people across 12 Chinese provinces, killing 45 of them, according to an October report by the World Health Organization, the most recent one available on the organization’s website.

Most of those cases were reported in March and April of this year, and almost none emerged over the warm summer months. But as the weather turns colder, the arrival of the traditional flu season has been cause for greater vigilance on the part of health officials and the general public.

Confirmation of a second case in Hong Kong raises concerns because the city of 7 million is a global transportation hub, and also because it has a long history of viral outbreaks.

In 2003, the SARS epidemic that originated in neighboring Guangdong province spread rapidly through Hong Kong — where it killed 299 people and infected 1,800 — to cause deaths in places including Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and Canada.

So far, health officials say there is no indication that the new avian flu virus is being transmitted between people, and that animal-to-human transmission is the most likely means of infection.

In the most recent case, Hong Kong health officials have put the man’s family members, the patients who shared the same cubicle at the Tuen Mun hospital and others he may have had contact with under medical surveillance.

The officials are still searching for the taxi driver who drove the man and three of his family members from the immigration checkpoint at Shenzhen Bay to the hospital in Tuen Mun. The man has since been transferred to Princess Margaret Hospital for isolation, where the Indonesian woman who first contracted the virus remains in critical condition.

“The Serious Response Level under the government’s preparedness plan for influenza pandemic has been activated while the Center for Health and Protection’s epidemiological investigation and follow-up actions are currently in full swing,” a spokesman for the health center said Friday in a statement.

After the first H7N9 case was discovered in Hong Kong Monday, local health officials tightened infection controls at hospitals and limited visiting hours, while strictly enforcing cleaning rules at live chicken stalls in local markets. Hong Kong also said it planned to step up health checks at its borders to screen visitors for the virus, although it was not known if the man in the latest case who came in from Shenzhen had been subject to such screening.

Also on Friday, health officials in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang confirmed an additional case of the H7N9 virus, a 30-year-old man who is being treated at a hospital in the city of Hangzhou.