Bird flu in South Korea

Latest news about bird flu in South Korea

Korea’s bird flu alert raised

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

Following two more outbreaks by the highly pathogenic virus H5N1, Korea’s government has raised the alert level to “precaution”, from the previous level of “attention”. The discovery was made at poultry farms in the North Jeolla Province. The decision has been made to cull all the chickens and ducks on a 3 km radius around the two farms, in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease. It is believed that around 800,000 poultry is raised in that area. The country killed 5.3 million birds in 2003, trying to contain the last known outbreak of avian influenza.

Posted in South Korea

5 old bird flu cases found in South Korea

Saturday, 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.

Posted in South Korea

South Korea citing Michigan bird flu for ban

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

South Korea has temporarily banned poultry imports from the United States, waiting on further laboratory results for the two swans from the state of Michigan found to have a strain of bird flu virus. South Korean say they do not want to take any chances and that the ban will be lifted if the virus proves to be a low pathogenic form of avian influenza. Roughly 26,000 tons of poultry were imported by the country from the United States, in the first half of the year alone. The US authorities announced earlier this week that the initial tests carried out on samples taken from the swans have ruled out the possibility of the virus being a dangerous H5N1 version. A definitive result will be available in about two weeks.

Posted in South Korea