Bird deaths in Russian flu epidemic up sharply
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The number of bird deaths in a Russian bird flu outbreak jumped sharply in the past 24 hours but there were no cases of the virus spreading to humans, the Emergencies Ministry said on Wednesday.
The ministry said in a note the total number of bird deaths jumped to 8,347 on Wednesday from 5,583 on Tuesday in an epidemic that has been spreading in Russia’s Siberia since mid-July.
“There have been no cases of people getting ill,” the ministry said. “A number of measures are being carried out to prevent the disease from spreading further.”
The news came just a day after a World Health Organisation official said the Russian epidemic was subsiding and should disappear by late August.
The highly potent H5N1 strain, which has struck mainly in Siberian regions bordering Kazakhstan, has killed over 50 people in Asia since 2003.
Outbreaks in ex-Soviet states have raised fears the virus could infect humans and trigger a global epidemic.
The Emergencies Ministry said most bird deaths on Tuesday and Wednesday occurred in the Omsk and Kurgan regions on the Kazakh border.
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