Bird Flu Outbreak Detected in Korea & Germany; Doesn’t Pose a Threat to Humans…

2020 has been a great year… for viruses.

Viruses all over the globe have been emboldened to emerge and make an attempt to spread, after the runaway success of the coronavirus.

The ruhugu virus has recently been discovered in Uganda, and China warned in June of a flu strain with “pandemic potential”.

Now, a strain of flu detected in South Korea and Europe has the authorities worried.

Bird Flu Outbreak Detected in Korea 

South Korea’s agriculture ministry issued a bird flu warning yesterday (10 Nov) after it found the H5N8 strain of bird flu in samples from wild birds in the country.

The samples were collected from wild birds last week in Cheonan-si, Chungcheongnam-do, which is about 84km central west of capital Seoul, according to Reuters.

Due to the risks of further spread, the ministry has implemented a host of prevention measures and issued a highly pathogenic avian influenza warning.

There is a fear that the virus will find its way to farms, which is why Agriculture Minister Kim Hyeon-soo urged the introduction of quarantine measures at farms, including the daily disinfecting of farmyards.

Netherlands & Britain to Cull Birds; Germany Orders Poultry Be Kept Indoors

A few days prior to South Korea’s discovery, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture ordered the culling of 200,000 chickens after discovering a highly pathogenic bird flu at a farm in the eastern town of Puiflijk.

All birds at a second farm within a 1km radius will be culled.

This is the second mass culling in the country after the H5N8 disease was first found in wild birds.

And the Netherlands isn’t the only country in Europe that’s had an outbreak of bird flu recently.

On Tuesday, all poultry in the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein was ordered to be kept indoors, after bird flu was found in two farms in the region.

Just as in South Korea, the strain found was the H5N8 bird flu.

Britain too, detected cases of bird flu in north-west England. To prevent further spread, they ordered a cull of 13,000 birds.

Risk to Humans Low

Here’s where you can breathe a sigh of relief.

The authorities are moving swiftly because the disease is spreading rapidly among wild birds, but the risk to humans is, thankfully, considered low. 

But how has it spread around Europe? The World Health Organization suspects that the virus has first been spreading among migratory birds, before finding its way to domestic poultry.

Countries have had past outbreaks of the H5N8 bird flu in the past, and needed extensive culling programmes to contain it.

Given what happened with Covid-19, the authorities are much quicker now to react to a virus and take the necessary measures to snuff it out.

So this prudence is certainly a good thing.

Featured Image: TukkataMoji / Shutterstock.com