January 13, 2004

South Korea Confirms New Bird Flu Case

South Korea confirmed the emergence of a new case of bird flu in the southeastern part of the country. The South Korean Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said that 9,000 chickens were killed.

It is the nation's first confirmed outbreak in nine days, increasing the number of confirmed cases to 16 since the first outbreak on December 15.

Authorities started an investigation last Saturday after a farmer in Yangsan, about 15 kilometers north of Busan, the country's second-largest city, reported that chickens at the farm died of unknown causes.

"The suspected case proved positive for the bird flu virus," said Kim Chang-seob, chief of the animal health division at the ministry. "We will make all-out efforts to prevent the spread of the disease."

The remaining chickens on the farm, numbering another 9,000, were slaughtered and access to the farm was restricted while tests were conducted in the area, according to the ministry.

Kim also said that the government imposed a ban on chicken imports from Japan on Monday after it was reported that about 6,000 chickens died from bird flu at a farm in Japan's Yamaguchi prefecture, the first outbreak in the nation in 79 years.

The H5N1 virus, which raged through South Korea last month, appeared to have been brought under control at the beginning of January after about 1.6 million chickens and ducks were culled.

However, quarantine officials battling to stem the spread of the highly contagious disease warned that a few signs of a possible recurrence, including a drop in egg-laying rate, remained present, prompting the authorities to stay on alert.

The virus can subsist in dust for two weeks and for at least 35 days in excrement. This is why, Kim said, Italian authorities waited about eight months before declared the country free of bird flu after it broke out in January 1998.

Since the disease was first discovered here on Dec. 15, chickens and ducks at 16 farms, including in North Chungcheong Province, the center of the outbreak, have tested positive for the virus, a variant of which killed six people in Hong Kong in 1997.

There were, however, no signs that the disease has crossed the species barrier to humans in South Korea. None of the more than 1,500 people who were exposed to the flu have shown any symptoms, health officials said. South Korea sent samples from the people to the U.S. Center for Disease Control for test on Dec. 18.

Although most strains of H5N1 are not transmittable to humans, South Koreans are avoiding eating chicken or duck, causing prices to drop by more than 50 percent.