Lab tests confirm Indian case of deadly bird flu

Lab tests have confirmed that at least some of the chickens that died of bird flu in western India in recent weeks were infected with the deadly H5N1 strain, the country’s first case of the disease.

Officials will immediately begin slaughtering hundreds of thousands of birds in a 1.5-mile radius around the poultry farms in the town of Navapur where the confirmed cases were detected, Anees Ahmed, the Maharashtra state minister for animal husbandry said.