Re: RUSSIA - H5N1 kills poultry in Moscow area / farm workers in hosp
Re: RUSSIA - H5N1 kills poultry in Moscow area / farm workers in hosp
Deadly bird flu strain strikes Moscow region
02-17-2007, 23h10
MOSCOW (AFP)
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Local policemen talks to residents in the village of Shikhkovo, some 60 kms west from Moscow, where the H5N1 virus has been registered. The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been confirmed at one of three farms under investigation on the outskirts of Moscow, a veterinary source said in the first outbreak of the disease to threaten the Russian capital.
(AFP)
</TD><TR><TD><SCRIPT language=javascript type=text/javascript><!--google_ad_client = "pub-7556461815428755";google_ad_width = 250;google_ad_height = 250;google_ad_format = "250x250_as";google_ad_type = "text_image";google_ad_channel ="4335879823";google_color_border = "FFFFFF";google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";google_color_link = "990000";google_color_text = "000000";google_color_url = "990000";--></SCRIPT><SCRIPT src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" type=text/javascript></SCRIPT></TD></TR></TR></TBODY></TABLE>The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been confirmed at one of three farms under investigation on the outskirts of Moscow, a veterinary source said in the first outbreak of the disease to threaten the Russian capital.
"We have just received the laboratory results" from the first of the farms, 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 birds but no human cases have been detected, the country's top epidemiologist, Gennady Onischenko said in an interview with the Russia Today news channel broadcast early Sunday.
"No illness or traces of the virus have been reported among humans. Everything is under control," he said, denying earlier reports 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.
Reports suggested the source of the Moscow outbreak could be the capital's main poultry market on the southeast fringe of the city, which has since been closed.
TV stations provided a phone number for people who may have bought birds there.
Regional health officials were taking blood samples from domestic birds within a three-kilometre (1.9 mile) radius of the first two farms and maintaining visual observation of domestic birds within a 10-kilometre (6.2 mile) radius Saturday, the Interfax news agency reported.
Russian television showed images of cars being inspected and disinfected at road blocks close to the farms.
Locals interviewed on Russian television did not appear particularly concerned, however.
"I have not heard anything about bird flu in our village. I think I would have heard something if it was really here," a local woman told NTV television.
A shop assistant at a Moscow supermarket told the channel that there had been no fall in sales of chicken since news of the outbreak broke.
Suspected 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 had been hit.
The three affected farms have since been disinfected and quarantined, and there is no danger in consuming eggs from local poultry producers, Nikolai Vlasov, director of the agricultural inspection agency Rosselkhoznadzor told AFP.
He later told the Interfax news agency tests had confirmed poultry from the Odintsovo farm had also tested positive for the H5N1 strain following earlier confirmation at a small household operation near Domodedovo.
"We do not have yet the results of analysis (at the third farm) and we can not thus say with precision which virus made the birds sick," Rosselkhoznadzor 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.
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Sat 17 Feb 2007 
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