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update:Oct 3, 2006
China reports new AI outbreak, shares samples
China has reported a new outbreak of bird flu in the country's north, and has also
shared long-awaited samples of bird flu virus strains with the global scientific
community.
A new outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu killed 985 chickens in the
country's northern region of Inner Mongolia, according to local news
reports.
The discovery of
bird
flu in a village near the city of Baotou prompted authorities to destroy
almost 9,000other chickens to prevent the virus from spreading.
Meanwhile, the
World Health
Organisation (WHO) says that China has shared long-sought samples of the
H5N1 bird flu virus, in what many scientists view as a breakthrough in
cooperation.
WHO officials said samples, taken from some of the thousands of
wild birds which died in Qinghai Lake in April 2005, have been sent to the
US Centers for Disease Control
(CDC), a WHO collaborating centre in Atlanta, for further analysis.
WHO
scientist Michael Perdue said the animal samples, the first from China
in two and a half years, should help scientists understand the origin
of a sub-type of the deadly H5N1 virus which later circulated in Turkey and
Africa but is genetically different from the one hitting other parts of Asia,
including Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
H5N1 has killed at least 148 people worldwide since it started ravaging
poultry stocks in Asia three years ago, according to WHO figures.
China has reported dozens of H5N1 outbreaks in its vast poultry flocks and
has destroyed millions of birds in an attempt to stop the spread of the
virus.
Eight earlier poultry outbreaks were recorded this year in central China
and areas of the north, east and southwest.
Editor WorldPoultry
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