Japan says bird flu outbreak is from deadly H5N1
Source: Reuters
(Adds details, background) By Miho Yoshikawa TOKYO, Jan 16 (Reuters) - An outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm in southwestern Japan was due to the lethal H5N1 strain of the virus, a farm ministry official said on Tuesday, confirming the first such case to hit Japan in three years. There have been no reported cases of human infection or additional outbreaks in poultry in Japan. Almost 4,000 birds died from the disease at the affected farm, and authorities killed the remaining 8,000 chickens at the farm on Sunday. Earlier tests had shown the chickens at the farm in Miyazaki prefecture were infected with an H5 subtype of the virus, but further testing was needed to tell if the virus had the N1 component that would make it the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain or the less lethal H5N2. Authorities in Miyazaki said they had started to incinerate the dead birds, a process that was expected to take about 30 hours and end around midnight on Tuesday. "It is progressing smoothly according to plan," an official at the prefectural government said. The ministry has restricted the movement of people and goods from farms located within a 10 km (6 mile) radius of the affected poultry farm. The official said experts would visit 11 chicken farms within the restricted area to make detailed checks, including taking blood samples from birds. There are 16 chicken farms within the area, but five of them do not currently have any chickens. The local government is also checking other chicken farms in the prefecture to see if there are any signs of the disease. Similar checks are being conducted nationwide by the Farm Ministry. "The rule is to visit each farm whenever possible ... but when this cannot be done then the checks may be conducted by making phone calls," a ministry official said. An interim report on the checks could be released late on Tuesday, he said. Japan has also put together a team of experts to try to trace the cause of the outbreak. Fears over the disease have rippled across Asia, with an Indonesian hospital overwhelmed by human cases of bird flu this week, while the virus is spreading among flocks in Vietnam and has flared up anew in Thailand. Miyazaki on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu is the country's top breeder of chickens, local authorities say. As of Feb. 1, 2006, the number of chickens it was raising for meat totalled 18.4 million birds. In 2004, Japan had four outbreaks of the H5N1 type strain in poultry between January and March, including an outbreak in Kyoto in western Japan that led to the disposal of about 240,000 chickens and 20 million eggs. (Additional reporting by Isabel Reynolds)
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