A new outbreak of the bird flu in Hong Kong shows the disease still poses a major threat. A World Health Organization (WHO) official urged Asian governments Thursday not to let down their guard against this epidemic. WHO Western Pacific Director Shigeru Omi said Hong Kong authorities have responded well by suspending poultry imports for 21 days and starting the slaughter of 80,000 birds right after three chickens were found dead at a farm Monday tested positive for the H5 virus group. However, further tests are still being conducted in order to see if the animals had the deadly H5N1 strain. For Omi, this is clear evidence that the virus is still circulating in this part of the world.

According to WHO, at least 246 people have died of bird flu worldwide since 2003. Twenty countries had outbreaks of the disease during the first nine months of 2008, down from twenty-five during the same period in 2007, according to U.N. data. However, some officials worry that the public has largely lost interest because the virus has not mutated into a form that could spread easily among people.

On Thursday, Hong Kong authorities confirmed that the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has caused the outbreak at the local chicken farm, as the latest tests showed that the three chickens found dead in the farm had the highly lethal virus. No other measures that the ones already implemented were adopted. Hong Kong's biggest bird flu outbreak was in 1997, when the H5N1 killed six people. The government slaughtered all 1.5 million poultry in the territory in order to stop the epidemic.