Where usually there is a cacophony of squawking birds and shouting dealers there was only silence yesterday, broken by the swish of disinfectant from hoses wielded by workers in conical straw hats.
This was the Cheung Sha Wan chicken market on the Kowloon peninsula, the biggest poultry outlet supplying Hong Kong. Authorities closed it down for sterilisation amid fears that it could be a breeding ground for a deadly and mysterious bird 'flu which has killed two people.
Hong Kong people are on edge over the outbreak, their apprehensions heightened by fear of the unknown. The strain of 'flu, known as H5N1, is normally confined to chickens, and doctors are at a loss to explain how it has spread to humans. At the back of people's minds is the fact that a Hong Kong 'flu caused the deaths of 10,000 people worldwide in 1968.
The H5N1 strains was identified for the first time in humans eight months ago when it killed a three-year-old Hong Kong boy. It has since infected seven people and caused one further death, that of a 54-year-old man. Two of the victims, a 13year-old girl and a 24-yearold woman, are in critical condition in hospital and a five-year-old girl is stable.
The first victim attended a nursery school which had a pet corner with baby chickens. Now primary schools with "feathered-friend" zoos are shutting them down or keeping children away, and preparing to kill the birds if the virus spreads.
Three "friendly" free-flying parrots have been removed from a park and locked in cages, and sterilised bins have been placed in several supermarkets for discarding dead chickens.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has recovered seven abandoned pets in recent days and has asked people not to dump their birds. Keeping song birds in cages and walking them in parks is a common Chinese pastime.
The World Health Organisation is expected to send investigators to China's Guangdong Province across the border where a million chickens are reported to have died from a disease earlier this year. Farmers say the symptoms were not those of bird 'flu. Three-quarters of the fowl which end up on Hong Kong dinner plates come from this region.
Chicken flesh sales fell 40 per cent last week and the Cheung Sha Wan market, which sells one-third of the 80,000 birds imported daily from China, suffered a 70 per cent drop in sales.
Wholesalers at the market blamed chicken smugglers for bringing in birds from China that had not been tested for disease. They also pointed out that no chicken handlers had caught the virus, adding to the mystery about how it is spread to humans.
Hong Kong's Chief Secretary, Ms Anson Chan, said at the weekend there was no evidence that "there is human-to-human transmission of the bird 'flu".
"We understand that the public and the media are extraordinarily concerned about the bird 'flu," she said. "We will inform the public at once as soon as we get the latest information. We have no intention to hide cases."
Dr Keiji Fukuda of the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta admitted he was baffled by the transmission of the virus. "The most likely way the virus is being transmitted is from some avian species, it could be chickens, it could be another," he said. "It's most likely poultry to human, human to human, or some combination."
The Hospitals Authority was criticised for not acting more quickly to procure serum and isolate suspected victims. A spokesman said it was "on high alert" and that new procedures had been issued to all public hospitals. Nine medical staff are being treated for 'flu-like symptoms.
Experts from the US Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta are helping Hong Kong experts investigate the virus. Agriculture officials said yesterday they had visited Guangdong's quarantine department and that in future only chickens whose disease status is known will be allowed for export.
The scare has dealt a further blow to Hong Kong's struggle to attract visitors after a slump in tourism, the biggest source of foreign currency earnings.