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Via the Korea Herald we learn that two more duck farms located (estimated looking at the map) roughly 20-25 miles north of the farm that was quarantined on Thursday for the HPAI H5N8 virus have tested positive for HPAI infection, although the exact strain has not yet been determined.
Updated : 2014-01-19 20:35
Additional cases confirmed on two farms
The government on Sunday confirmed that poultry from two duck farms in Buan, North Jeolla Province were infected with avian influenza virus.
There are now three duck farms with confirmed cases of the virus.
“The case reported on the 17th has been confirmed as the highly pathogenic H5N8 strain,” Kwon Jae-han, director of livestock policy bureau at the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs said.
As for the farm that reported a suspected AI case on Saturday, it has yet to be confirmed whether the infection is caused by the same strain.
The government has imposed a mandatory halt on the movement of poultry, poultry industry workers and equipment for 48 hours in the Jeolla provinces, while they work to contain this outbreak.
In 2011, South Korea fought In 2011 South Korea fought a protracted battle against the spread of H5N1 virus in their poultry farms that resulted in the culling of over 5.5 million birds across 249 farms in response to at least 43 reported outbreaks of the virus (see South Korea: Two New Bird Flu Outbreaks Reported).
While this newly emergent HPAI H5N8 virus (see A Little More On South Korea’s H5N8 Poultry Outbreak for some background) is highly pathogenic in poultry, for now we don’t know anything about its potential (or lack, thereof) to infect humans.
We will obviously be interested to see if these two additional farms are infected with the same H5N8 strain, and what epidemiological links might have led to the spread of the virus.
