AFP/Hong Kong

Hong Kong culled thousands of chickens yesterday after the potentially deadly H7N9 bird flu virus was discovered in poultry imported from China, days after a woman was admitted to hospital with the disease.
Authorities found the virus in samples taken from 120 chickens imported from the nearby Chinese city of Huizhou and slaughtered nearly 19,000 birds, including 11,800 chickens.
“The rapid testing showed... that this batch of chickens carries the H7N9 virus,” the city’s health minister Ko Wing-man said Wednesday.
Televised images showed authorities beginning the cull Wednesday morning, with health officials in white hazmat suits dumping chickens into green plastic bins.
The bins were then pumped with carbon dioxide to kill the birds, a spokeswoman for the city’s agriculture department told AFP.
The carcasses were sent to landfills for disposal after the operation was completed at around 5:30 pm.
Poultry imports from the mainland have been banned for three weeks.
A 68-year-old woman was admitted to hospital with the virus on December 25 after returning to Hong Kong from the neighbouring southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, although it has not been confirmed how she contracted the disease.
She remains in critical condition.
In response to the new case - the city’s first since early 2014 - Hong Kong announced it was raising its response level in hospitals to “serious” from “alert”, with extra precautions implemented from Sunday.