February 20, 2004

Japan Second Bird Flu Outbreak Confirmed As Deadly Strain

Japan's second outbreak of bird flu in the south of the country as been confirmed as the same deadly H5N1 strain that has hit other Asian countries, a researcher at a government research center said Thursday.

Masataka Tangiku, head of virus research at the National Institute of Animal Health in Tsukuba city, north of Tokyo, said tests on tissue from the seven chickens tested positive for the virus.

The chickens died between Saturday and Monday at a home in the town of Kokonoe in Oita Prefecture (state), about 850 kilometers (530 miles) southwest of Tokyo. Earlier tests had failed to identify the virus, though Japanese researchers suspected it to be an H5 strain.

Tangiku said scientists haven't been able to trace how the virus reached pet birds kept at an ordinary household.

Avian flu generally infects only birds, although it has spread to people in a few isolated cases. The latest outbreak has killed 22 people in Vietnam and Thailand. No human cases have been confirmed in Japan.

Also affected by the H5N1 strain are Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and South Korea. Pakistan and Taiwan are reporting a milder strain of the virus.

Past outbreaks of the H5N1 strain - which killed six people in Hong Kong in 1997 - have taken years to bring under control, and never has the disease spread as far and as fast as it has this year.

Although most of the human cases have been traced to direct contact with sick birds, experts fear that the longer it takes to contain the virus, the greater the chances are that it might link with the human flu virus and become easily transmittable from person to person, sparking a new flu pandemic.

Japan's outbreak last month killed thousands of chickens at a farm in Yamaguchi prefecture (state), the country's first case of bird flu in 79 years. No link between the Oita and Yamaguchi outbreaks has been found.