Korean bird flu gets new look
Reported May 19, 2008
The bird flu strain that has swept through Korea over the past six weeks is not the same strain that has infected humans, government authorities found over the weekend.
The finding comes after the killing of over eight million birds and poultry to stop what the government thought was a threat to human health.
The National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service said during the weekend that the virus strain that caused the current avian influenza breakouts across the country is the same strain of H5N1 that appeared in Akita Prefecture and on Hokkaido Island in Japan since late April.
The strain is different from those that can infect humans.
Those have appeared in Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.
That strain has a mortality rate of over 50 percent.
The strain that caused the current bird flu is different from the avian influenza virus affecting humans in Indonesia, said Kim Ki-seuk, the head of the team researching the virus. ¡°The virus here has so far infected only poultry. No human has ever been infected.
According to team members, the H5N1 virus currently found in Korea and Japan is the Fujian sub-type 2.3.2. It has also been reported in southern China, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
The highly contagious H5N1 strain of bird flu is a type called clade 1.
The H5N1 strains found in China and Laos, which can cause human infections, belong in the 2.3.4 clade subtype.
Bird flu has killed 234 of some 369 people it has infected, according to the World Health Organization.
The quarantine service said that migrating birds from the south spread the virus to Korea.
Previous bird flu outbreaks in 2003 and 2006 were caused by migrating birds from China, Kim said. ¡°We guess that the current cases are due to migrating birds from the Southeast Asian region such as Vietnam.
Following the official report released by the quarantine service, Koreans, who continue to fear the spread of bird flu, started to question the government¡¯s response.
Their criticism focused on how long it took to confirm what caused the bird flu outbreaks.
While the first confirmed outbreak of bird flu was reported at the beginning of April, it took more than a month for the government to confirm the type of virus involved.
The government had to carefully respond to the spread of bird flu cases, so we needed more time to get the final report, an unnamed official of the national service said. ¡°It takes less than a week to identify the type.
Currently a total of 43 confirmed H5N1 outbreaks of avian influenza have been reported in every corner of the nation, including the capital Seoul, since April 1, leading to the culling of millions of birds and a sharp blow to the poultry industry.