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MOSCOW: Russia has registered its first cases of the
deadly H5N1 bird flu since an outbreak hit dozens of towns and
villages last year.
“A laboratory analysis
uncovered the H5N1 bird-flu virus,” in poultry at three locations
in the southern Krasnodar region, said Aleksei Alekseyenko, an
official at the country’s agricultural inspection agency Rosselkhoznadzor,
the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
“A series of antiepizootic
measures are being undertaken in the unfortunate areas to control
the infection,” he said.
The three infected areas are
located near the country’s Black Sea coast.
Bird flu was discovered at more
than 90 points in southern Russia and Siberia in 2006, with the last
quarantine lifted in August.
Earlier Monday, the European
Commission confirmed the first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu
virus in the European Union since mid-2006 after tests on Hungarian
geese proved positive.
Last week Japan and Hong Kong
reported fresh cases of strains of the virus, and Indonesian
authorities said an 8-year-old girl had become the latest person in
the country to die from it.
The H5N1 virus can be deadly to
humans and its appearance in recent years has sparked fears it could
mutate and become easily transmissible from human to human, causing
a pandemic like the Spanish flu in 1918 that killed millions of
people.
The virus has killed about 160
people worldwide since late 2003, mostly in Asia. No human
fatalities from the virus have been reported in Russia.
--AFP
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