January 27, 2004

Korea Bird Flu Different Strain From Vietnam

The Korea Center for Disease Control have quickly pointed out that the bird flu plaguing South Korean poultry farms is of a different strain from Vietnam.

The findings are based on preliminary results of tests conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. after the first case of bird flu was uncovered in South Korea last month.

According to the tests, the H5N1 strain confirmed on 16 South Korean farms is slightly different from the Vietnam variety, the Korean health agency said. The avian sickness is also likely to have entered each country through different channels, the agency said.

Final CDC results will come out next week, and findings on the likelihood of the South Korean strain jumping to humans will take longer, the Korean agency said. None of the 1,500 people who have been exposed to the flu in South Korea has shown signs of the illness so far, it said.

Since bird flu was discovered in South Korea, authorities have culled 24 million chickens and ducks to contain the outbreak. Another farm was quarantined Sunday, when 3,700 of its 23,000 chickens were found dead.

Attempts to tackle bird flu in Asia have been frustrated by its fast rate of mutation as well as its rapid spread across at least eight countries.

Six people have died in Vietnam and a 6-year-old boy was confirmed Monday as Thailand's first victim to perish from the virus. Thai officials are trying to determine whether bird flu was also the cause of last week's death of a 56-year-old man who had bred fighting cocks.

Scientists believe people get the disease through contact with sick birds. Although there has been no evidence yet of human-to-human transmission, health officials are concerned it might mutate further and link with regular influenza to create a form that could be transmitted from person to person, triggering the next human flu pandemic.

A previous strain detected in Hong Kong in 1997 can no longer be used to produce a vaccine.