Romania Suspects new birdflu cases
Romania has found new suspected bird flu in hens in a village 160 km (100 miles) east of Bucharest and began culling domestic fowl there, officials said on Wednesday.
The H5 type virus was confirmed last week in two villages in the Ialomita county 100 km east of the capital, indicating the disease could be spreading towards Bucharest.
Since October, the Balkan country has found avian flu in 22 villages in and around the Danube delta on the Black Sea, where the deadly strain of the virus was first discovered some 300 km from Bucharest.
Nine cases have been confirmed as the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain. But the disease has not appeared close to large cities and officials have said it was unlikely to break out there.
“Rapid tests on samples taken from hens in the village of Stelnica, on a Danube river tributary, raised suspicion of the H5 type,” Nicolae Stefan, head of the Animal Health and Diagnosis Institute, told Reuters.
He said the village will be quarantined and all domestic fowl would be culled as a precaution.
He also said that more samples from hens in the village of Traian 100 km east of the capital showed signs of the H5 type. About 50 birds have already been destroyed since Monday when authorities first suspected the virus there.
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