What the authorities really want to investigate is the situation of human bird flu infections in southern China, according to one expert.
Chinaโs authorities have issued notices indicating concern over spring outbreaks of respiratory illness after a winter of what local residents have described as elevated levels of severe respiratory infections.
In its latest notice titled โPreventing and Controlling Key Infectious Diseases Such as COVID-19 Infection in the Spring of 2025,โ issued on Feb. 27, the Chinese regimeโs National Administration of Disease Control and Prevention ordered all level of disease control agencies nationwide to monitor the multiple virus that are spreading in the country to prevent โspringโ outbreaks.
The viruses highlighted in the notice issued include influenza, COVID-19, dengue fever, norovirus, monkeypox, avian influenza, and other emerging infectious diseases.
The notice warned of โthe dynamics of pathogen mutations,โ and called on officials to โstrengthen the genetic testing for various respiratory infectious disease pathogens.โ
The notice emphasized that the agencies should โclosely monitor and dynamically assess the risk of influenza virus transmission between animals, and from animals to humans.โ
In another notice issued on March 4, the administration reported that from Feb. 26 to Feb. 28, its deputy director Xia Gang went to Guangdong Province in southern China โto investigate dengue fever prevention and control work.โ
But the dengue fever isnโt the real focus of the investigation, according toย Sean Lin, assistant professor in the Biomedical Science Department at Feitian College and former U.S. army microbiologist.
He told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on March 7 that Dengue fever will only start to spread after May, with the peak in the summer because it is a disease spread by mosquitoes.
โThe authorities are using dengue fever as a cover now and what they really want to investigate is avian influenza in Guangdong and human infections with avian influenza,โ he said.
โJiangmen City in Guangdong has previously banned the sale of live poultry, but other major cities in Guangdong have not yet taken corresponding measures, which is rather worrying. I think the central government also wants to know the actual situation,โ Lin said.
Byย Alex Wu