Guard against bird flu outbreak

We should not let our guard down against a possible outbreak of bird flu during Spring Festival, says an article in Beijing Times. The following is an excerpt:

With the latest round of attack of the deadly bird flu, the safety of people's lives has been put to the test again. According to latest reports, three people died from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in China this month and a fourth person remained critically ill. Chen Zhu, the health minister, said on Jan 20 that this is the time when bird flu spreads most easily, and it is difficult to control its spread.

Governments at different levels should build an effective and timely response and a system to control the bird flu. We can see that the performance of the governments in releasing information on the disease, fighting it and hospitalizing the victims has been much better than that during the initial period of the SARS outbreak in 2003.