Bird flu doing the rounds in South Korea

Authorities in South Korea say they have found another case of a highly pathogenic bird flu in North Cholla province south of Seoul.

The agriculture ministry says the third case was discovered at a quail farm in the same province about 170 km south from Seoul, and only 18 km from the original outbreak.

The first two outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of the virus occurred last month at two poultry farms close to each other in North Cholla province.

The outbreaks are the first in three years; thousands of birds at the quail farm have died over the past four days.

The fresh case emerged after South Korea has finished the culling of as many as 760,000 poultry near the two farms first infected.

Between December 2003 and March 2004, about 400,000 poultry at South Korean farms were infected by bird flu.

That particular outbreak prompted the culling of 5.3 million birds and subsequent testing in the United States indicated at least nine South Korean workers involved in the culling had been infected with the H5N1 virus, but fortunately none developed major illnesses.

Asia's poultry has been decimated since late 2003, when the H5N1 virus first reappeared.

To date it has killed at least 154 people worldwide, and almost all human infections have been contracted by close contact with infected birds.

Experts fear the virus will mutate into a form that could create a human pandemic.

South Korea has also reported a few outbreaks of a low-grade strain of bird flu that is not harmful to humans.