The agricultural and health departments of the southern province of Guangdong said yesterday that live pigs and frozen pork in the city of Shenzhen that had been suspected of infection with Streptococcus suis have been cleared.

Xinhua News Agency reported today that 15 pigs were found with symptoms of the infection in Shenzhen last Monday and were quarantined soon afterward.

On Thursday, 600 kg of frozen pork in the city that had come from southwest China's Sichuan Province, where an epidemic of the pig-borne disease broke out in June, was suspected of being infected.

After analysis by a team of animal epidemic prevention experts from the provincial agricultural department on Saturday, samples from both the live pigs and pork tested negative for the bacteria.

They were then tested again by three experts from Nanjing Agriculture University, after which all the live pigs and frozen pork were declared free of Streptococcus suis infection.

According to the last Ministry of Health report on the Sichuan outbreak, 39 people have died since the first recorded case in Ziyang City on June 24. As of noon on August 8, 214 people were thought to be infected in the province and 89 had been discharged from hospital.

Since the Sichuan epidemic began there have been two reported cases in Guangdong and the cause of neither has been established, though both had slaughtered or butchered pigs.

The first was a man in Chao'an County, Chaozhou City diagnosed on July 27, as confirmed by the local health department on July 29 and reported the next day by Xinhua.

The second was in Jiangcheng County, Yangjiang City, where a man was hospitalized on August 5, according to August 9's China Daily, quoting the provincial animal epidemic prevention center the day before.

(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2005)