British Bird Flu Is Asian Strain Of H5N1 Virus

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has confirmed that the highly pathogenic Asian strain of the H5N1 virus was the one that killed 2,600 turkeys at a farm in Suffolk, England. Authorities say the outbreak is being contained and the threat to human health is negligible. The virus is similar to the one found in southern Hungary last month, where 3,000 geese were killed in a farm in Szentes.

European Union agreed controls have been enforced, these include:

-- Setting up a protection zone with a 3 kilometer radius around the infected area
-- Setting up a surveillance zone with a 10 kilometer radius around the infected area

So far, 164 people are known to have died of H5N1 infection worldwide since 2003, the majority of them in Asia. Over 220 million birds have either died of infection, or been killed in preventative measures, since 2003.

Containing the spread of any outbreak is crucial in the battle to stop/delay the virus from mutating into a human transmissible form - something scientists fear will eventually happen.

At the moment it is still very hard for a human to catch the illness from a bird. It is even harder for a human to infect another human.

One of the ways in which the H5N1 virus could mutate would be to infect a person who has the normal human flu. The bird flu virus could then exchange genetic information with the human flu virus and acquire its ability to become easily human transmissible (spread easily from human-to-human).

Basically, if fewer outbreaks among birds occur, fewer people become infected. If fewer people become infected, the chances of a mutation are smaller.

-- Bernard Matthews (Company that owns the farm)
-- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
-- National Farmers' Union
-- Health Protection Agency
-- Veterinary Laboratories Agency

Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today