AI Affected Provinces – Credit Japan’s MAFF
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Just as in China, the Lunar New Year in Korea is a major holiday - one that inspires tens of millions of people to return to their hometowns to celebrate with family and friends. And just as in China, this year concerns over an emerging flu virus have Korean officials scrambling to prevent all of this travel from spreading the virus further.
The difference being, in China the H7N9 virus is affecting humans, while in Korea the H5N8 virus has (so far, anyway) only affected birds.
Today Korea’s MAFRA issued a 12-hour "temporary stop moving instruction" at all poultry farms in the three affected provinces, the idea being that this gives them an opportunity to disinfect all farms, vehicles, and equipment simultaneously without concerns that contamination is being spread in the background. Nearly 4,000 civil servants and 144 disinfection vehicles have been deployed to the three provinces in an attempt to eradicate the virus.
This stops short of the 48 hour lockdown discussed yesterday. Details are available in this MAFRA News Release, although the machine translation leaves a bit to be desired.
The Korean Times zeroes in on the big concern right now, that this week’s holiday travel could help spread the virus to currently unaffected provinces.
'Holiday to determine bird flu fight'
The upcoming Lunar New Year holiday is expected to be a watershed in the ongoing fight against the spread of avian influenza, experts and government officials said Monday.
“The South Chungcheong provincial government will ask travelers to refrain from visiting the province, and conduct thorough disinfection of vehicles traveling into the region,” said Kim Don-kon, an official with the local government.
About 27.7 million people are expected to travel to their hometowns during the holidays raising the chances of the bird flu outbreak being spread by human vectors.(Continue . . .)
While the immediate concern is the containment and eradication of the H5N8 virus on Korea’s poultry farms, long term success may hinge on how well entrenched this virus is in migratory birds. To that end, Korea’s MAFRA is currently testing more than 80 wild birds (see list here).
Thus far the virus has been detected in Teal Ducks, Bean Geese, and a Coot (a medium size, crane-like bird). Tests are pending on more than 5 dozen samples taken from a wide variety of migratory birds.
And as the over-wintering birds that are currently roosting in Korea also visit Japan, and parts of China as part of their yearly migration, the results obtained from this testing will be of great interest to those nations as well. After the beating Asia’s poultry industry has taken over the past dozen years from the H5N1 virus, the last thing they need is another highly pathogenic avian virus to contend with.
