Saturday, February 3, 2007

Asian H5N1 Strain Discovered in Britian

Via BBC News -

The avian flu which killed 2,600 turkeys at a Bernard Matthews farm in Suffolk has been confirmed as the Asian strain of the H5N1 virus.

The virus can be fatal if it is passed on to humans but experts said the outbreak was being contained and posed little danger to people's health.

The Veterinary Laboratories Agency carried out the tests which confirmed the outbreak in Holton.

Nearly 160,000 turkeys at the farm will now be slaughtered as a precaution.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the flu is the "highly pathogenic" Asian strain, similar to a virus that was found in Hungary in January.

In that incident, the first time bird flu had reoccurred in the European Union since August 2006, a flock of 3,000 geese were killed when the strain was discovered on a farm in Szentes, southern Hungary.

A three-kilometre protection zone and a 10km surveillance zone has now been set up around Holton, which is approximately 27km south-west of Lowestoft.

It is the first case on a UK commercial farm of an H5N1 infection.

The strain has killed 164 people worldwide - mainly in south-east Asia - since 2003.

However, the virus is not thought to be able to pass easily from human to human at present.

A spokesman for Bernard Matthews, which runs the farm in Holton, said none of the affected birds had entered the food chain and there was no risk to public health.

So far, all those who have been infected worldwide have come into intimate contact with infected birds.

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