South Korean quarantine officials were preparing to kill hundreds of thousands of poultry after a fresh outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, the agriculture ministry and health officials said yesterday.
The outbreak occurred at a chicken farm in Cheonan, about 92km south of Seoul, earlier this week, the fifth such outbreak since November, said Lee Joo-won, a ministry official.
"We plan to start slaughtering 273,000 poultry within a 500m radius of the outbreak site and destroying eggs on Sunday morning," Lee said.
It will take about three days to complete the culling, said Park Yang-soon, an official at the South Chungcheong provincial government, which controls Cheonan.
Limiting movement
The ministry also said it would make a decision whether to kill another 386,000 poultry today while limiting the movement of about 2.16 million chickens and ducks from 90 farms within a 10km radius of the outbreak.
South Korea culled 5.3 million birds during the last known outbreak of bird flu in 2003. The H5N1 virus began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 and has killed more than 160 people worldwide.
Most human cases have resulted from contact with infected birds. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that is more easily transmitted between people, possibly creating a pandemic that could kill millions.
"People can be infected with H5N1 virus at any time but the disease is curable if people take the antiviral drug Tamiflu within 48 hours after the infection," said Kwon Jun-wook, an official at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Kwon, the KCDC's director of the communicable disease control team, also called for thorough preparations against the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
Earlier this month, South Korean officials said that the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus had been transmitted to a human during a recent outbreak among poultry, but the person showed no symptoms of the disease as the poultry farm worker developed natural immunity to the disease.
Meanwhile, an Egyptian woman died from bird flu overnight, bringing to 11 the number of people in the country to have succumbed to the disease, the heath ministry said yesterday.
Drug-Resistant Strain
The death comes only two days after the WHO in Geneva announced that a medication-resistant strain of the virus was responsible for the last two flu deaths in Egypt.
The latest victim, Warda Eid Ahmed, 27, from Beni Sueif south of Cairo, was hospitalized on January 13 in the Egyptian capital before being diagnosed with H5N1 four days later.
Like the previous two cases, Ahmed was treated with the anti-flu drug Tamiflu, but still died.
Health ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman Shahin said however that eight of the 19 cases were treated successfully.
"The cases which were detected early and treated quickly were all cured. The 11 deaths were victims discovered to be at an advanced stage of the disease," he told the official MENA news agency.
also see story:
Indonesian woman dies from avian flu, death toll up to 62
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary