Thailand has confirmed a new case of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu among chickens in a northeastern province, amid rising fears over the virus following the kingdom’s 13th fatality, officials said on Monday.
The Avian Influenza Control Operating Centre in Bangkok said it confirmed the virus last week in one district in the northeastern province of Kalasin, about 500km northeast of Bangkok.
It was the first bird flu case in the province for more than a year.
”When we found a suspicious death in poultry, we culled them and sent their samples for lab tests,” a centre official told Agence France Presse, adding that the lab was also investigating another area suspected of having bird flu in the province.
The official did not say in how many chickens the virus was found, or how many chickens had been culled.
The new outbreak followed Thailand’s first human fatality from bird flu in a year — a 48-year-old Thai farmer who slaughtered and then ate a sick chicken.
The farmer, Thailand’s 13th victim of the virus, died this month and his seven-year-old son was also infected, becoming Thailand’s 19th confirmed human case of avian flu.
The deadly H5N1 strain of the virus has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003 and is now spreading to Europe and the Russian Federation.
Thailand has 16 outbreaks in five of its 76 provinces. – AFP
