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Special Report: Before coronavirus, China bungled swine epidemic with secrecy



(Reuters) - When the deadly virus was first discovered in China, authorities
told the people in the know to keep quiet or else. Fearing reprisal from
Beijing, local officials failed to order tests to confirm outbreaks and didn’
t properly warn the public as the pathogen spread death around the country.

當致命病毒在中國首次發現時，有關當局告訴知情人士隱匿疫情。
由於擔心受到北京當局的處分，當地官員未能下令進行篩檢以確認疾病爆發，
且沒有即時警告世人，直到病原體在全國各地傳播造成死亡


All this happened long before China’s coronavirus outbreak, which has
claimed more than 3,000 lives worldwide in less than three months. For the
past 19 months, secrecy has hobbled the nation’s response to African swine
fever, an epidemic that has killed millions of pigs. A Reuters examination
has found that swine fever’s swift spread was made possible by China’s
systemic under-reporting of outbreaks. And even today, bureaucratic secrecy
and perverse policy incentives continue undermining Chinese efforts to defeat
one of the worst livestock epidemics in modern history.







Beijing’s secretive early handling of the coronavirus epidemic has troubling
similarities to its missteps in containing African swine fever, but with the
far higher stakes of a human infection. After the coronavirus was found in
December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, local and national
officials were slow to sound the alarm and take actions disease experts say
are needed to contain deadly outbreaks. Beijing continues to gag negative
news and online postings about the disease, along with criticism of the
government’s response.




北京政府卻繼續控制有關於該病情的負面新聞、網路文章、以及封鎖對於政
府的批判。


With swine fever, Beijing set a tone of furtiveness across government and
industry by denying or downplaying the severity of a disease that the meat
industry estimates has shrunk China’s 440-million-hog herd by more than
half. The epidemic has taken a quarter of the world’s hogs off the market,
hurt livelihoods, caused meat prices to spike globally and pushed food
inflation to an eight-year high.






Cover-ups across China - coupled with underfinancing of relief for devastated
pig farmers and weak enforcement of restrictions on pork transport and
slaughter - have enabled the spread of the livestock virus to the point where
it now threatens pig farmers worldwide, according to veterinarians, industry
analysts and hog producers. Since the China outbreak, African swine fever has
broken out in 10 countries in Asia.





The vacuum of credible information has made it impossible for farmers,
industry and government to tell how and why the disease spread so quickly,
making preventive measures difficult, said Wayne Johnson, a Beijing-based
veterinarian who runs Enable Ag-Tech Consulting.

“To get it under control, you have to know where it is,” Johnson said.

China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a statement to
Reuters that it has repeatedly communicated to all regions the importance of
timely and accurate reporting of African swine fever outbreaks and had zero
tolerance for hiding and delaying the reporting of cases.

Interviews with farmers, industry analysts and major suppliers to China’s
pork sector indicate otherwise. More than a dozen Chinese farmers told
Reuters they reported disease outbreaks to local authorities that never made
it into Beijing’s official statistics. Those infections are going unreported
to central authorities in part because counties lack the cash to follow a
separate requirement from Beijing to compensate farmers for pigs killed to
control the disease.

Local officials have also avoided reporting outbreaks out of fear of the
political consequences. And they have routinely refused to test pigs for the
virus when mass deaths are reported, according to interviews with farmers and
executives at corporate producers.

由於擔心造成政治後果（被和諧），當地官員選擇隱匿疫情的爆發。
根據對於農民和管理人員的採訪顯示，當豬隻有大規模死亡時，他們通常
選擇拒絕替豬隻做病毒檢測


A farmer surnamed Zhao, who raises a herd in Henan province, said local
officials told him as much when they resisted recording the outbreak he
reported on his farm, which wiped out his herd.



“‘We haven’t had a single case of African swine fever. If I report it, we
have a case,’” Zhao recalled an official telling him. The local officials
could not be reached for comment and a fax seeking comment went unanswered.

「我們這邊沒有任何非洲豬瘟疫情」趙姓農民說：「如果我舉報我們這邊其實有案例
，通常無法聯繫官員、也沒辦法得到任何回應」


When the coronavirus hit, Chinese authorities reacted with a push to reassure
the public that all was well. The first reported death from the virus, also
known as SARS-CoV-2, came on Jan. 9 - a 61-year-old man in Wuhan. In the
following days, Chinese authorities said that the virus was under control and
not widely transmissible.

當武漢肺炎爆發，中國當局也做了相同反應，向大家保證一切都很好。
根據報導，在一月九日，第一例死亡為武漢一名61歲男子，原因為：
SARS二代（SAR-Cov-2）

但隨後幾天，中國當局表示該病毒可以控制、且不會廣泛傳播


The assurances came despite a lack of reliable data and testing capacity in
Wuhan. Testing kits for the disease were not distributed to some of Wuhan’s
hospitals until about Jan. 20, an official at the Hubei Provincial Centre for
Disease Control and Prevention (Hubei CDC) told Reuters. Before then, samples
had to be sent to a laboratory in Beijing for testing, a process that took
three to five days to get results, according to Wuhan health authorities.

儘管武漢缺乏可靠的數據和篩檢能力，但仍取得了保證。
湖北省疾病控制中心一名官員告訴路透社：「該病毒的檢測試劑直到一月20日
才分發到武漢的一些醫院」
「在此之前，樣品必須先送到北京的實驗室進行測試，這一過程必須三到五天
  才能得到結果」

During that gap, city hospitals reduced the number of people under medical
observation from 739 to 82, according to data from Wuhan health authorities
compiled by Reuters, and no new cases were reported inside China.

在這段期間內，路透社編譯武漢市衛生部門的數據顯示，程式醫院將接受篩檢的
人數從739人減少到82人，並且在中國沒有新的病例報告

China’s top leadership has dramatically ramped up the public-health response
since its early missteps. Beijing built new hospitals in days to treat the
sick and launched an unprecedented blockade of the disease epicenter on Jan.
23, first quarantining Wuhan’s 11 million residents at home, then suspending
transport in all major cities of Hubei province, home to about 60 million
people.


的封城舉動。首先對於武漢1100萬居民進行隔離、並且暫停了湖北省內所有主要

城市的交通，該省有約6000萬人


Still, the initial attempts to tightly control information left many people
unaware of the risks and unable to take precautions that might have prevented
infection - and the suppressing of news and commentary continues today. Wuhan
authorities reprimanded eight people they accused of spreading “illegal and
false” information about the disease. One of them, 34-year-old doctor Li
Wenliang, later died from coronavirus, triggering an angry backlash on social
media.

儘管如此，最初嚴格管控信息，仍然使很多人不瞭解風險，而無法採取有效的
防疫措施。如今，對於新聞和消息的壓制仍在繼續！！！

武漢當時處罰了「散播謠言的八個人」

其中一名，34歲的李文亮醫師，後來就死於武漢肺炎，他的死亡引發社群網站
一些強烈不滿


Some critical posts were allowed during a brief and unusual period of online
openness in late January. But Beijing’s censors - the Cyberspace
Administration of China (CAC) - have since cracked down on posts about Li and
other information that authorities deem negative, according to CAC censorship
orders sent to online news outlets and seen by Reuters. One CAC notice
ordered online outlets to guard against “harmful information.” Another
ordered them not to “push any negative story.”

在一月下旬短暫且不尋常的開放期間，允許發佈一些關鍵文章。
但是北京的和諧組織the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC)
下達強烈的審查命令。

自此之後，一切和諧，一些罵政府、對政府不利得信息，以及關於李文亮
的帖子迅速遭到刪除。

一條通知命令下來，要求各網站防範"有害信息"、以及"不要發表任何負面消息"




UNREPORTED OUTBREAKS <本段基本在講非洲豬瘟，就不翻譯了>
Beijing had years to prepare for African swine fever. Veterinarians have
frequently warned Chinese authorities of the risks since the disease started
spreading through the Caucasus region in 2007.

Pigs infected by the virus initially suffer high fever, loss of appetite and
diarrhea. Then their skin turns red as internal hemorrhaging starts and their
organs swell, leading to death in as little as a week.

With no vaccine or cure available for the disease, experts recommend that
infected pigs and others housed in the same barn are culled, with the
carcasses either burned or buried to prevent further infection. Farms,
equipment and vehicles that could be contaminated need to be thoroughly
cleaned and disinfected.

The first case in China was discovered on Aug. 1, 2018, on a farm near
Shenyang, in the northeastern province of Liaoning. Just two weeks later, the
virus was found more than 1,000 kilometers to the south in pigs bought by the
country’s top pork processor, WH Group(0288.HK), from another northeastern
province, Heilongjiang. It took Beijing another two weeks to block pig
exports from the whole region, and that and other transport restrictions were
poorly enforced, said Johnson and other industry experts. WH Group declined
to comment.

One factor behind the epidemic: Chinese consumers prefer fresh pork -
straight from the slaughterhouse, rather than chilled. This means hundreds of
thousands of live pigs are moved long distances every day to supply
processors in major cities. That mass movement spread the disease
relentlessly.

Over the first four months of the outbreak, Beijing reported swine-fever
cases almost daily as the virus spread from the northeast down through
central China, west into Sichuan, and to the huge province of Guangdong by
year-end. Veterinarians believe the virus spread quickly because it can
survive for weeks on dirty farm equipment or livestock trucks.

And yet gaps in counting and tracking the pig disease have been routine
across China. Reuters found a striking absence of reported outbreaks in some
of the nation’s most productive pork regions.

For instance, almost none of the reported outbreaks have come from the major
hog-raising provinces of Hebei, Shandong and Henan. The three contiguous
northern provinces were the source of some 20% of the 700 million pigs China
slaughtered in 2017. Many came from backyard farms, which make up a large
part of China’s industry and have proven fertile breeding grounds for the
disease. Yet each of the three provinces has reported just a single case of
African swine fever, despite widespread anecdotal reports of outbreaks there
that industry sources believe killed millions of pigs.

Neither Shandong nor Henan authorities responded to requests for comment.
Hebei’s department of agriculture said it had “strictly reported and
verified the epidemic” and that the disease situation was currently “stable.
”

Six Henan farmers told Reuters they reported outbreaks during late 2018 and
the first half of 2019. In some cases, local authorities helped deal with
dead pigs, they said, but never tested for the virus.

That’s what happened when Wang Shuxi, a farmer in Henan’s Gushi County,
lost more than 400 pigs in March 2019. Wang said he had no doubt that his
pigs had African swine fever, even though authorities never tested them - and
he couldn’t test them himself, because Beijing did not permit the commercial
sale of disease test kits at the time.

His pigs showed telltale symptoms of the disease.

“The whole body went red,” he said. He injected the animals with an
anti-fever medication to no avail. “At the start, they didn’t eat, and even
after injections, it kept returning,” he said. “If you can’t cure it, you
know it’s swine fever.”

Provincial and county governments had strong incentives to avoid verifying
and reporting outbreaks because of Beijing’s rules on compensating farmers,
said Huang Yanzhong, specialist in health governance with the Council on
Foreign Relations in New York.

Under an African swine fever contingency plan drawn up in 2015, Beijing
ordered the culling of all pigs on farms where the disease is found and on
every farm within a three-kilometer radius. The central government raised
compensation from 800 yuan ($115) to 1,200 yuan for every pig culled in 2018.
Beijing typically promised to provide between 40% and 80% of the money,
depending on the province. Localities would fund the rest.

In April 2019, the national agriculture ministry said the central government
had allocated 630 million yuan to cull 1.01 million pigs to contain the
disease. But that money either wasn’t sufficient or regularly did not get
paid out, farmers told Reuters. None of about a dozen farmers who told
Reuters they tried to report outbreaks said they had received the promised
1,200 yuan for each pig.

Many got nothing. Wang, the Gushi County farmer, said that almost a year
after his pigs died, he has received no recompense. Gushi County officials
could not be reached for comment.

Many farmers, eager to salvage value from their herds, have resorted to
sending their pigs to slaughter at the first sign of illness - thereby
thrusting the virus into the human food supply. The swine fever virus does
not threaten people. But its presence in meat - where it can survive for
weeks - creates a cycle of infection because many backyard farmers feed pigs
with restaurant scraps that include pork.

Garbage feeding caused 23 outbreaks in 2018, Huang Baoxu, deputy director of
the China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center, told reporters at a briefing
in November that year. His remarks were a rare instance where the central
government revealed findings about the spread of the hog virus. The center
declined to comment for this story.

Farmers visiting slaughterhouses dealing in sick pigs also likely picked up
the virus on their trucks or equipment, spreading it back to their farms,
Johnson said.

In the southern province of Guangxi, the disease raged through the spring of
2019 and early summer, several farmers told Reuters last year. Bobai County
was hit hard.

A Bobai farmer surnamed Huang said she lost almost 500 pigs during April and
May. She said she tried to report the diseased pigs to the local government
but was ignored. The official she spoke to by phone never came to her farm.
He told Huang that her pigs could not be saved - but that they didn’t have
African swine fever. His advice, she said: “hurry and sell the pigs while
they could be sold.”

Huang said she sold more than 30 pigs that she believed had the virus. They
looked healthy when she sold them, she said. Others sold obviously sick pigs
at very low prices. “Traders took all the pigs, including the sick ones - as
long as they could walk to the trucks,” she said.

Huang buried her dead pigs daily for weeks on a relative’s land. Others
simply dumped their dead pigs on the roadside or in the mountains, she said.
The government provided no help.

Eventually, in late May, Bobai County reported one pig dead from the disease,
official statistics show.

Authorities in Guangxi did not respond to a request for comment, and
officials in Bobai county’s agriculture bureau could not be reached.

Beijing’s agriculture ministry said in a statement that it had issued an
August 2019 order requiring punishments in situations where localities failed
to report outbreaks. The ministry said it meted out unspecified discipline to
more than 600 local personnel for what it called failures to manage the
disease that were uncovered in its investigations of problem areas.

The practice of processing infected hogs has persisted despite new rules from
Beijing in July that required slaughterhouses to test all batches of pigs for
the virus. The agriculture ministry said in January that 5% of the more than
2,000 samples taken from slaughterhouses in November tested positive for the
disease.

An Australian study in September found 48% of meat products confiscated from
Asian travelers arriving at its ports and airports contained the virus.

“It showed there’s an awful lot of unrevealed infection not being reported
to the authorities,” said Trevor Drew, director of the Australian Animal
Health Laboratory.



One such information gap is at the top of the industry - China’s large
corporate pig producers. They have also been hit hard by the disease, despite
taking more extensive measures than backyard farms to disinfect trucks and
require workers to change clothes and shower before and after shifts.

None of China’s top publicly traded producers have publicly announced any
swine fever outbreak, but executives of major hog producers acknowledged in
interviews with Reuters that their herds were hit by the disease.

Thai conglomerate C.P. Pokphand(0043.HK) , one of China’s leading pig
producers, has had swine-fever outbreaks on farms in Liaoning, Shandong,
Henan and Jiangsu provinces, Bai Shanlin, chief executive of China
operations, told Reuters in a rare admission by a listed firm. Executives at
three other listed companies, also among China’s top pig producers,
acknowledged outbreaks at several farms but declined to be identified.

None of the outbreaks that these large companies have confirmed to Reuters
were reported by Beijing, according to a Reuters review of the agriculture
ministry’s data on outbreaks.

By August 2019, a year after the first case was found in China, pork prices
had passed a record set back in 2016. And they were still climbing rapidly.
With a crucial national celebration approaching in October - the 70th
anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic - China’s top leaders
took note. Pork is a staple of Chinese cuisine, and rising meat production
has been among the many signature achievements in the Communist Party’s
decades-long drive to bring prosperity to China.

In a video conference that month with officials from all 34 provinces and
regions, Vice Premier Hu Chunhua issued a warning: Sufficient pork was vital
to people’s lives and the country’s stability. He called for the urgent
recovery of the herd as a key “political task.”

A raft of new production policies and incentives emerged from Beijing. And as
the provinces rallied to replenish the nation’s herd, reports of African
swine fever grew even more rare. Disease outbreaks reported by the
agriculture ministry have tailed off since August. In January, Agriculture
Minister Han Changfu said the situation has stabilized.

The government’s statistics are rife with contradictions, however. The
ministry has reported 163 outbreaks of African swine fever since August 2018
and said 1.19 million pigs have been culled, a fraction of 1% of China’s
total herd. Separate ministry data tracking the herd monthly show that, by
September 2019, the herd had shrunk by 41% from the prior year.


These official estimates of the decline are far too low, three major industry
suppliers told Reuters.

“It’s at least 60%,” said Johan de Schepper, managing director of Dutch
feed ingredients firm Agrifirm International. His assessment, based on sales
to about 100 large pig producers, echoed those of others in the industry.

The virus is still killing pigs nationwide and the herd may still be
shrinking, say farmers and industry suppliers. “Half of the herd was gone
before this winter, and I think half of the rest will be gone by the end of
the season,” said Johnson, the veterinarian, citing conversations with
clients from across China.





The problem: Some areas were hit with a second wave of the disease.
問題：某些地區正遭逢第二波疾病的侵襲

Henan province is among them, farmers told Reuters. Last year, about 60% of
Henan’s herd was wiped out, mainly in the densely farmed areas in the south
and west of the province, analysts at Guotai Junan Securities wrote in an
internal memo seen by Reuters. Recently, the memo noted, the virus has moved
through east Henan, taking out another 20%.




The vicious disease ruined Zhao, the farmer in central China’s Henan
province. The virus struck in October, causing high fever, internal bleeding,
vomiting and diarrhea in his pigs. Just two survived. The other 196 died in a
week.


When Zhao tried to report the outbreak to the county veterinary authority, he
said, officials strongly encouraged him to keep quiet. A local official
reminded him of the national mandate to cull all pigs within three kilometers
of an infected farm. That could spell disaster for his neighbors if Zhao
spoke up.





“If it’s found to be African swine fever, people nearby will have to stop
raising pigs,” Zhao recalled a local official telling him. Zhao decided
against filing a report to protect his neighbors, he told Reuters on a recent
visit to his farm.

「如果發現是非洲豬瘟，附近的人將不得不停止養豬」趙回應說：
「在最近一次訪問他的農場時，他決定不停交報告、來保護他的鄰居」


Further up the political hierarchy, the deputy governor of Henan province was
quoted by the provincial agriculture bureau as saying in December that Henan
had been free of the disease for 14 months, after a single reported case in
September 2018. The provincial government did not respond to requests for
comment.
在政治等級更高的地方，河南省副省長在2019年12月曾援引農業廳的話：在2018年
九月報告一起病例後，河南省已經病了14個月，但省政府並沒有回應相關意見


The disinformation game continues. Zhao says that when county officials came
by his farm in January, they recorded that he still had 180 pigs. In fact, he
said, he had just the two hogs that survived the October outbreak.
虛假的信息遊戲仍然在持續，趙姓人士說：
「當縣府官員一月份來到他的農場時，他們記錄他仍然有180隻豬
  實際上，他只有兩隻豬倖存下來」

“The country is being kept in the dark,” he said.

他說：「這個國家一直處在黑暗之中」

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評論:
簡單來說，當大家現在都在注意武漢肺炎時，其實非洲豬瘟仍在繼續！



然而，從中國處理非洲豬瘟的態度，至今還在隱匿、造假，完全都可以看出，
武漢肺炎，他們的處理態度也是完全相同。

對於中共而言，人命死亡數量，大概就跟豬隻死亡數量是完全相同的。


中共當局對豬瘟的爆發數量直到現在都努力和諧、致力於封口，
那對於武漢肺炎呢？


我不知道

我只確定，如果非洲是中國的一個地名－
那現在中共當局應該正努力地要把非洲豬瘟正名為 豬瘟-2019
並且宣稱台獨才會叫他非洲豬瘟

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