Saturday, February 03, 2007

Bird Flu in Suffolk

BBC News just reported that there is an outbreak of H5 bird flu in Suffolk in England. Officials are doing more tests to find out if it is H5N1 the strain that can infect humans. Defra in the UK is where the official information comes from.

1000 turkeys have already died and 160,000 are to be culled. Hmm, coming so close to Christmas that's a bad 2 months to be a turkey.

Update: It's H5N1.

Sky News have a map of the world showing places where there have been outbreaks of Bird Flu. It shows Northern Ireland as having had an outbreak because Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom just like England where Suffolk is. An outbreak of Bird Flu in turkeys on a farm in England being extended to the United Kingdom is a bit unfair on Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland. Suffok is about as far from Northern Ireland as you can get and still be in the United Kingdom. Also the farm was supposed to be a "biologically secure farm" to prevent the spread of bird flu, so it is possible that the infection came in on infected material rather than wild birds.

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