China confirms bird flu outbreak
China today announced a new outbreak of bird flu while Thailand said it had a suspected case in a return of the highly contagious disease that devastated birds earlier this year and killed 24 people.
It was China’s first report of the avian illness since it declared it had “stamped out” the disease nearly four months ago.
Tests on dead chickens found at a farm in the southeastern province of Anhui have confirmed that they died of bird flu, the government said .
In Thailand, authorities said they suspect a new outbreak of bird flu at a farm in the central province of Ayutthaya. Thousands of chickens on the farm have died.
Bird flu has also been confirmed on farms in Vietnam in recent days.
Although the newest cases have affected only poultry, world health experts have said they fear bird flu might mutate and lead to a possible pandemic in humans.
At its height earlier this year, the disease ravaged flocks throughout Asia. It also spread to humans in Vietnam and Thailand, killing 24 people. About 100 million chickens across the region were slaughtered to halt its spread.
China declared it had defeated the disease in March after slaughtering nine million chickens and other poultry. But it warned that the disease might come back with warmer weather.
“It’s not surprising that it has come back,” said Roy Wadia, a spokesman for the World Health Organisation in Beijing. “It stays in the environment a long time.”
The farm, in the city of Chaohu near a scenic lake with the same name, has been quarantined, China Central Television said.
Authorities killed all the poultry within two miles of the affected farm and vaccinated poultry within three miles, in line with established control measures, the report said.
It added that the outbreak was under control.
The Thai case, if confirmed, would be the country’s second outbreak since the government declared on May 14 that it was all but certain Thailand was free of the disease.
Chickens at the farm in Ayutthaya began to die about two weeks ago, said farm owner Veera Sripramong. Officials ordered him to kill all of his 43,000 chickens.
