Bird flu checks back in to Czech Republic

The Czech Republic has found two new outbreaks of bird flu on poultry farms near where the deadly strain of the virus was found a few weeks ago.

Josef Duben, a spokesman for state veterinarians, says that H5 had been confirmed in two flocks of around 70,000 birds, at commercial poultry farms in the eastern towns of Chocen and Netreby which are mostly being raised for egg production.

The results of further tests to confirm the presence of the deadly H5N1 strain are pending.

Mr Duben says unfortunately all the birds will have to be culled within the three kilometre exclusion zone, including those of small breeders.

The two farms are within the three-kilometre exclusion zone already established around the village of Norin where the H5N1 strain was confirmed in a 28,000-strong flock of chickens at the end of June.

Within a radius of another 10 kilometres from the infected farms, poultry breeders are being told to keep their animals indoors and are banned from moving or selling them.

That outbreak appeared a week after the Czech Republic's first case of H5N1 in domestic poultry was confirmed at a turkey farm at the nearby village of Tisova, where what was left of a 6,000 flock was also culled.

Last year, the potentially lethal strain was found in 14 dead swans in the country's southern regions.

Since the Czech outbreak in June, other cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu have appeared in France and Germany.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), to date 190 people around the world have died of bird flu since 2003, mainly through coming into close contact with infected poultry, and millions of birds have died from it one way or another.

Scientists continue to fear the virus will ultimately mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, which could trigger a global pandemic with the potential to kill millions of people.