# 946
What a difference a year makes. This time last year, I wrote a blog called Where Have all The News Reports Gone? in response to 10 days in late June, 2006 with almost nothing of note to blog on. The first two-weeks of July were equally quiet.
This June, in comparison, I've posted nearly 4 blogs each day. We've seen major outbreaks in Vietnam and Bangladesh, ongoing deaths in Egypt and Indonesia, and fresh outbreaks in Ghana, Togo, Germany, and the Czech republic this month.
This steady drumbeat of news during what has traditionally been a quiet time for H5N1 appears to signify a change. Either the virus is becoming more active in the summer months, or our surveillance and reporting is getting better.
All poultry at Czech Norin farm culled over bird flu
Norin- Czech military and firefighters have completed the liquidation of some 28,000 broilers this morning at a farm where the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was confirmed on Wednesday, Ales Cernohorsky from the regional firefighters' rescue corps told.
This morning the culling of the poultry of small farmers in the neighbourhood will be completed.
Soldiers and firefighters will disinfect and clean the Norin farm.
Veterinaries have closed the farm today and started to take safety measures similar to those applied in Tisova, four kilometres away from Norin, where bird flu was uncovered at a local turkey farm last week.
Pardubice Regional deputy governor Roman Linek said that the inhabitants of the region do not face any threat.
The police have closed all roads to Norin and they only let locals in.
The ban on poultry exports to EU countries has been introduced in the region, Pardubice regional authorities spokeswoman Katerina Nohavova said.
This week, bird flu virus was also detected in a dead swan found in Lednice, south Moravia. However, the results of the first test for H5N1 are yet to be confirmed by the National Reference Laboratory in Prague.
The first bird flu case in the Czech Republic was discovered in March 2006. Another 13 cases of H5N1 infection of swans living in the wild were registered last year.
