Hong Kong - Hong Kong said it would end a ban on fresh chicken imports early next month as a "bird flu" outbreak which prompted the ban appears to have been contained.
The government would end the ban on the import of fresh chickens from Feb. 7, said Michael Suen, head of a government task force fighting the virus which has so far killed six people and infected a dozen others.
The news will be welcomed by Hong Kong's devastated poultry industry and diners craving fresh chicken meat.
But the lifting of the ban will still come too late for Hong Kong's overwhelmingly Chinese population to enjoy a traditional Lunar New Year feast of freshly killed chicken next Wednesday.
Freshly slaughtered fowl is considered essential for the traditional Chinese feast but people are making do with frozen chicken imported from places such as Brazil and the United States.
The decision to lift the ban came a week after the government said it believed the "high risk" period for the H5N1 virus had passed.
No new cases have been found since Hong Kong slaughtered 1.4 million fowl in late December in a bid to contain the virus.
Health officials have said they believe the virus was brought in by chickens imported from across the border in southern China.
Before the bird flu scare, Hong Kong imported 75,000 chickens a day from China but imports have been banned since December.
World Health Organisation officials touring southern China said last week they thought it unlikely that the flu had originated in China.
They said it was more likely to have originated elsewhere, perhaps in Hong Kong's often unsanitary poultry farms.
The bug was only known in birds until last year, when after a three-year-old Hong Kong child died from it.
The subsequent flu deaths sparked global fears of an epidemic similar to a 1968 Hong Kong flu which killed 46,500 people worldwide.
Although Hong Kong may breathe a sigh of relief over Friday's decision, another big health scare is only just beginning.
Authorities said on Thursday a medical test might have infected 111 hospital patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the human equivalent of "mad cow" disease, and that seven of the patients had died.
Health chiefs said on Friday they would help seek compensation for the patients. They also appealed to medical suppliers worldwide to help tackle the problem.
The health and hygiene crises have come on the back of a string of economic problems which have dogged Hong Kong since the former British colony reverted to Chinese control as a special administrative region last July.
The city is reeling from a stock market and property slump, mounting layoffs and bankruptcies brought on by the chaos that has rocked Asian financial markets for the past half year.
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