Bird flu threatens to spread

By Nam Hyun-woo

An avian flu outbreak is feared to be spreading with a second case confirmed in Buan, North Jeolla Province, Sunday.

Over 20,000 ducks were culled in Gochang in the same region, Friday.

South and North Jeolla provinces and Gwangju have been placed under a 48-hour quarantine forbidding the movement of poultry, farm workers and veterinarians until midnight today.

“The virus confirmed at the Buan farm is highly pathogenic. The ministry has already ordered to cull ducks at the farm and neighboring ones,” said an official at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

Some 60,000 breeding ducks at three nearby duck farms were ordered to be slaughtered as a preventive measure.

The confirmation is second of its kind, following that of the outbreak of H5N8 virus, Friday, at a poultry breeding farm in Gochang in North Jeolla Province.

The ministry said the virus confirmed at the Buan farm was also H5N8.

Highly pathogenic variants of the avian influenza A virus is usually of the subtype H5 or H7 with factors N1, N2, N8 and N9.

Earlier, in addition to the quarantine measure, the ministry launched an investigation of 24 other farms which received ducklings from the Gochang farm. No farms were affected by the virus, according to the ministry.

The measure came into effect to prevent avian influenza from going viral in the region where 70 percent of duck farms are clustered.

The ministry set up some 150 disinfection and quarantine posts in the region and conducted anti-virus measures on vehicles passing through the affected area to prevent further infection.

The bird flu outbreak marked the first time since the last one was reported in 2012. At that time, avian influenza subtype H5N1 broke out, forcing the authorities to slaughter some 3 million poultry with no human casualty occurring.

The authority said it suspects migratory birds might be the source of the virus.

“The ministry suspects the feces of migratory birds as the source of the outbreak,” said the official.

Meanwhile, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that there is no reported human infection of H5N8 virus worldwide.

The H5N8 went viral in Ireland and China, respectively in 1983 and 2010, but no human casualty was reported, unlike other subtypes ― H5N1 and H7N9 ― which have claimed human lives since 2003. There are no reported cases of human infection with avian influenzas in Korea.