Via CIDRAP, Robert Roos writes: Avian flu in South Korea, Taiwan prompts massive culling. Click through for the full report, which includes outbreaks in Vietnam and Germany as well. Excerpt:
South Korea and Taiwan have destroyed more than 2.7 million poultry in recent weeks and months in efforts to halt highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks of the H5N8 and H5N2 varieties, according to reports posted yesterday by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
In addition, South Vietnam has reported another H5N1 avian flu outbreak, and low-pathogenicity avian flu (LPAI) H7N7 recently struck a turkey farm in Germany, according to media and OIE reports.
The latest outbreaks prolong a string of avian flu episodes that have surfaced this winter in Asia, Europe, North America, and Africa. Last week the World Health Organization said the diversity and geographic extent of recent avian flu outbreaks are greater than at any time since the debut of modern surveillance methods.
South Korea cites 65 H5N8 outbreaks
A South Korean report posted by the OIE yesterday describes 65 H5N8 outbreaks dating all the way from late last September to late January and involving about 2.6 million poultry. The report profiles 22 stand-alone outbreaks and "outbreak clusters" including from 2 to 13 individual incidents.
The affected sites had a total of 2,589,062 birds, including ducks, chickens, geese, and doves. Only 177 cases, all fatal, were reported, but all the rest of the birds were destroyed to stop the virus. Most of the outbreaks were in the southwest and northwest of the country, with a few in the southeast, according to a map in the report.
South Korea had widespread H5N8 outbreaks in January and February of 2014, followed by isolated outbreaks in June and July.
