August 30, 2006

No sign of H5N1 in 13,000 birds tested in US state Alaska

There has been no sign of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in the 13,000 bird samples that have been tested in Alaska, US Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Tuesday.

However, some less virulent forms of the flu were found, said Kempthorne, who was visiting a bird nesting site outside Barrow.

Hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle, biologists working in the frosty marshes of Alaska's North Slope are keeping a lookout for migratory birds that might carry the H5N1 flu strain, which has been linked to the death of at least 141 people, mostly in Asia.

"I think it's going very well," Kempthorne told The Associated Press after he helped a volunteer biologist gather a test sample from a young Dunin shorebird at a site on Beauford Sea, near the northernmost point in the US.

The fowl offspring's parents likely flew here from Japan or Korea, Audrey Taylor, the volunteer, told Kempthorne.

Deborah Rocque, the bird flu testing coordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, said the programme is concentrating on testing on the North Slope and the Yukon Delta.