Bird flu was found in a pair of chickens raised in South Korea's southern city of Seosan, 140 kilometers north of Iksan where the first outbreak forced quarantine officials to slaughter nearly 100,000 livestock last week, government officials said Monday.
The infected chickens had been hatched out of eggs supplied in mid-November from a breeding farm in Iksan where the virus was first discovered last week, the provincial officials said.
The officials did not say whether the virus was a highly-virulent strain, such as the one found in Iksan, which is believed to cause human infections.
"Preliminary tests point towards it being low pathogenic," said the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in a seperate statement.
It said that the final test results will come out later in the day.
Quarantine officials have so far destroyed 96,000 poultry within a 500-meter radius of the outbreak site in Iksan, about 250 kilometers south of Seoul, fearing the spread of the fatal virus believed to have killed some 250 people worldwide since its outbreak in 2003.
The officials also said they plan to slaughter an additional 230,000 livestock by Thursday and indicated disposal areas may expand, hinging on further discoveries.
The officials in Seosan said they are keeping their eye on other blood samples extracted from eight poultry farms in the area for the preliminary test while tightening the embargo on the transfer of livestock. Five of the farms under scrutiny have made purchases from Iksan-located breeding farms, they said.
In 2003 and 2004, South Korea destroyed more than 5 million poultry to curb the spread of the disease. No South Korean has been reported to be infected, however.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization believes the virus may mutate into a highly virulent strain that can easily be transmitted among humans if left unchecked.
Seoul, Nov. 27 (Yonhap News)
Bird flu newly found in South Korea amid massive quarantine efforts |
