May 22, 2006

Bird flu suspected in deaths of 168 Siberian poultry

Bird flu was suspected in the deaths of nearly 170 poultry in a Siberian village, emergency officials said Friday (May 19).

Sample taken from dead birds in Troitsk, a village in the Altaisky region, about 3,000 kilometres east of Moscow, showed the presence of bird flu antibodies, authorities said in a statement posted on the regional emergency ministry website.

The statement also said workers were beginning to vaccinate poultry at industrial bird farms, and Russian news agencies said a quarantine had been imposed around several households.

Emergency officials in the region could not be reached to clarify whether the virus discovered was the deadly H5N1 strain.

Russia recorded its first cases of bird flu in Siberia last year. Authorities warned that during the spring migration, the virus could again spread from Siberia and southern areas into Russia's European regions.

Earlier this week, emergency officials said investigators were probing whether a man who allegedly flouted a ban on hunting wild fowl was responsible for an outbreak of bird flu in a village in the Omsk region, about 2250 kilometres east of Moscow. Epidemiologists have confirmed bird flu in that case, though they could not yet say whether it was H5N1.