Vietnam confirmed a bird flu outbreak in chickens in a northern province only two weeks after it announced the disease had been contained, reported Reuters.
The director of the northern province of Hai Duong’s animal health department, Dong Van Chuc, said tests on a flock of about 10,500 chickens confirmed the presence of a bird flu virus, quoted online newspaper VnExpress.
Around 70 chickens died from bird flu a week ago, Chuc said. The entire flock was immediately culled last Sunday and no new infection had been detected since then, he said.
Hundreds of thousands of birds in Asia died due to a virus that has been dubbed the “bird flu.” The highly contagious illness is responsible for wiping out large numbers of poultry in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. The particular strain of influenza which has been reported as causing the de aths is called H5N1. Humans can contract the disease through close contact with infected birds, or with the feces of infected birds. It is not known to spread through human-to-human contact. There has been no indication that humans would get the disease through eating eggs or meat of sick birds. The only known way to eradicate the disease is by culling infected flocks.