Russian bird flu may be spreading
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A bird flu outbreak in Russia’s Siberian regions may be spreading, but no humans have been infected so far, officials and Russian media said on Monday.
The highly potent H5N1 strain, confirmed in the Siberian region of Novosibirsk, has swept parts of Asia and killed more than 50 people since 2003. Outbreaks in Russia and later in neighboring Kazakhstan have been reported since mid-July.
In a sign the outbreak had yet to be contained, news agencies reported the virus may have spread to two more districts of the Kurgan region in western Siberia where bird flu was confirmed in wildfowl last week.
“Dead bird samples from these areas have been taken away for checks,” Interfax news agency quoted a regional agriculture official as saying.
But Russia’s consumer rights watchdog said the situation was under control.
“As of August 7, 2005, the epidemic situation…remains stable…There have been no infections and no one was suspected of having been infected,” the watchdog, part of the Health Ministry, said in a statement.
Some health officials fear the virus that has swept through Asia could mutate into a lethal strain that could rival or exceed the Spanish flu pandemic that killed up to 40 million people across the globe at the end of World War One.
Itar-Tass news agency quoted Novosibirsk officials as saying mass deaths among farm birds largely stopped on Monday in the worst-affected, quarantined areas of the Novosibirsk region.
Mass poultry deaths in Novosibirsk have been registered since July 10, according to media reports. The number of Russian regions hit by the avian flu rose to five last week.
Russia’s growing bird flu crisis could drive up imports of poultry. Russia annually consumes more than 2 million tonnes of poultry meat and imports more than half its needs from the United States, Brazil and other countries.
The European Union has decided to ban imports of chickens and other products from Russia and Kazakhstan, although in practice the EU does not buy poultry from the two ex-Soviet countries.
KAZAKH
In Central Asia’s Kazakhstan, the deaths of 364 hens in the village of Krasny Yar, initially assumed to having been caused by bird flu, turned out to be due to a regular bird disease, Interfax quoted regional veterinary officials as saying.
But there was no word on the situation in other, more widely affected Kazakh regions, including Pavlodar where bird flu had been registered officially.
The Russian Emergencies Ministry said in a note issued on Monday that a total of 5,573 domestic and wild birds had been affected in the Novosibirsk, Omsk and Tyumen regions.
Russia has culled tens of thousands of domestic birds in past days to prevent the virus spreading. In Tyumen region alone, more than 12,000 chickens, ducks and geese had been killed, Tass said.
Tass quoted Tyumen officials as saying the virus had been confirmed in another small village called Vorobyovo, but it was unclear how many birds were affected there. Tass said checks were being carried out in a number of nearby settlements.
Interfax news agency reported from Altai, another affected Siberian region, that state inspectors joined forces with local hunters to locate, check and, if necessary, shoot down infected birds, especially in areas near big farms.
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