Swedish authorities said Wednesday that tests had confirmed that
two wild ducks found on its east coast carried the H5N1 strain of
bird flu.
Preliminary tests late last month showed that two wild ducks
found near the Baltic port city of Oskarshamn carried the
aggressive H5 virus, but more tests were needed to ascertain that
they were cases of the deadly H5N1 strain.
"The laboratory in Weybridge (United Kingdom) has now confirmed
that it is an H5N1 virus, just as we thought," the National
Veterinary Institute said in a statement.
Since the first two cases were found, around a dozen wild birds
found along Sweden's southeast coast and on the Baltic island of
Gotland have been identified as carrying the H5 virus.
No cases have been reported in domestic fowl.
Neighboring Denmark has found its first case of the highly
pathogenic H5 bird flu virus in a wild fowl, officials said
Wednesday.
Denmark, a major poultry producer with an output worth 3 billion
crowns (US$483.5 million) a year, has been on guard against bird
flu since disease was found on the German Baltic island of Ruegen,
near Denmark's southern coast in mid-February.
Denmark has since examined more than 100 dead wild birds for
avian flu.
Meanwhile, authorities in western India prepared to cull tens of
thousands of chickens Wednesday to prevent the spread of bird
flu.
In India's western state of Maharashtra, tests were infected
chickens there had H5N1, said Upma Chowdhary of the federal animal
husbandry department.
India has reported no human infections of the virus.
A cull of about 75,000 chickens started Wednesday in a
10-kilometre radius around four Indian villages where the outbreak
was first spotted in mid-February, Chowdhary said.
Nearly 250 workers will slaughter the birds and clear their
droppings and other waste over the next seven to eight says,
Chowdhary said.
Concerns over the global spread of bird flu were heightened
again this week when the Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan reported
three people killed by the virus, which also has killed 98 other
people in Asia, the Middle East and Turkey since 2003, according to
the World Health Organization.
The North Korea said Wednesday it was closely monitoring
migratory birds as a precaution against bird flu and had locked up
all local poultry in an effort to protect them from any birds
carrying the disease.
All local poultry has been "cooped up" to prevent contact with
wild birds, said Mun Ung-jo, vice-chairman of North Korean main
quarantine office, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
In Afghanistan, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said it
hoped to find out soon whether five swab samples from poultry in
backyard farms in the capital, Kabul, and the eastern city of
Jalalabad, tested positive for H5N1.
The samples have already tested positive for H5, but the virus'
specific subtype was not known.
In Southeast Asia, Myanmar said it has culled 5,000 birds in a
3-kilometer radius of a farm where the country's first case of H5N1
was detected last week.
It also banned the sale of chicken and eggs near the property
where 112 chickens died, in the city of Mandalay, according to the
Livestock Breeding and Veterinary Department.
(China Daily March 16, 2006)
