If you are a Beijing resident with a temperature of 38?C or
higher, and show other symptoms of flu after having close contact
with infected poultry or human cases, you are required to undergo
at least a week of medical observation.
Doctors in all the hospitals of the capital city yesterday were
asked by the municipal health authority to report all cases showing
the above-mentioned symptoms.
"Doctors should be responsible for not only the patients they
have received, but also epidemic control as a whole," Jin Dapeng,
director of Beijing Health Bureau under the municipal government,
was quoted by the Beijing Times as saying.
Up till Friday, no poultry or human cases of bird flu have been
reported in Beijing, although China has reported 13 poultry
outbreaks and two human cases, in Hunan and Anhui.
All local governments have also been urged to give timely
reports of poultry deaths, and hospitals have been asked to open
hotlines for consultations or have been appointed as facilities for
treating humans infected with the H5N1 strain.
Doctors who do not report suspected cases will be punished
according to the relevant laws, Jin said.
Beijing has appointed two infectious disease hospitals to be
ready for receiving and treating any possible human cases.
One of them, You'an Hospital, can establish special wards with
60 beds within four hours.
On Friday, no more human bird flu cases were detected in the
country.
In Hunan Province, no "abnormal signs" were detected in 152
villagers who came in contact with a nine-year-old boy infected by
the virus.
Experts had warned that human cases were inevitable if the
government could not stop repeated epidemics among birds and
poultry.
"Stopping the poultry epidemic spreading is still a very urgent
task. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to prevent other new
human outbreaks," Mao Qun'an, spokesperson of the Ministry of
Health, told China Daily.
(China Daily November 19, 2005)