5 old bird flu cases found in South Korea
September 16th, 2006
Samples taken from five South Koreans have revealed the had been infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus three years ago, but no further symptoms of a serious illness developed in any of them. Old samples were sent to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as part of a program testing 318 poultry industry workers that might have been exposed to the virus during an outbreak in late 2003 and early 2004. South Korea dealt with an avian influenza outbreak that infected around 400,000 poultry between the months of December 2003 and March 2004, without any human cases being reported at that time. Another 5 million poultry were culled in an effort to contain the disease.