02-17-2007, 10:26 PM
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| Senior Monk
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Rep Power: 2  | Russia Confirms Bird Flu Case
Quote:
MOSCOW - The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been confirmed at one of three farms under investigation near Moscow, a veterinary source said Saturday in the first outbreak of the disease to threaten the Russian capital.
"We have just received the laboratory results," Russian veterinary authority spokesman Alexei Alexeyenko told AFP, "the precise subtype of the H5N1 virus (will be known) by Sunday evening."
"It could be similar to the virus that was seen in Asia," or it could be a less dangerous strain, he said.
Potentially fatal to humans who come into contact with infected poultry, the H5N1 virus was recorded in southern Russia in late January, but the current outbreak is the first near Moscow, home to more than 10 million people.
Tests have been carried out on people who came into contact with the dead animals but no human cases have been detected, the country's top epidemiologist, Gennady Onischenko said Saturday.
"There are no declared or suspected cases of the disease among humans," he told NTV television, contradicting reports on Friday that farmers had been hospitalized with symptoms of the disease.
The Russian find follows recent outbreaks of the potentially lethal strain of the virus in Britain and Turkey, while Hungary reported the first detected case of the strain last month, the first such outbreak in the European Union since mid-2006.
All of the birds in the three affected farms in the Moscow area were reportedly bought at a poultry market in the capital, prompting TV stations to mount an appeal to people who may have bought birds there.
The three affected farms have been disinfected and quarantined, and there is no danger in consuming eggs from local poultry producers the director of agricultural inspection agency Rosselkhoznadzor Nikolai Vlasov told AFP.
Regional health officials were taking blood samples from domestic birds within a three-kilometre radius of the first two farms and maintaining visual observation of domestic birds within a 10-kilometre radius Saturday, the Interfax news agency reported.
Russian television showed images of police searching cars at road blocks close to the farms.
The presence of bird flu was first reported Friday near two towns in the Moscow region, Odintsovo and Domodedovo.
On Saturday, 44 birds were found dead at a third farm 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the capital, prompting fears that it too was infected.
"We do not have yet the results of analysis and we can not thus say with precision which virus made the birds sick," veterinary service spokesman Alexei Alexeyenko said Saturday.
The H5N1 strain was registered in Russia in late January in poultry plants in the Krasnodar region, just over 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) south of the capital, but no human infections were found.
The strain, which first emerged in Asia, has caused 270 reported human infections worldwide since 2003 and killed 164 as of last month.
An outbreak of bird flu in 2006 killed four people in Turkey and five in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet state located in the Caucasus mountains region between Russia and Turkey.
Experts fear the virus could cause a pandemic by mutating into a form that is transmissible between humans.
| Turkish Press |
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