The South Korean government said Tuesday that another outbreak of the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza (AI) was proved on a poultry farm in the Iksan city, 230 km south of Seoul.

The new outbreak of the bird flu is only 3 km away from the previous one, where the government had culled and buried all animals within a 500-m radius of a poultry farm since the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus was confirmed last Saturday.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said test results showed the newly reported cases was caused by highly pathogenic strain of bird flu virus.

However, it still needs more time to confirm whether the virus is the H5N1 strain, which can be fatal to humans, the ministry said.

The ministry received a report on Monday that 200 out of 12,000 chicken on a poultry farm in Iksan died massively. Following the confirmation of the bird flu outbreak, the government decided to cull all animals, incluing all chicken, 8 pigs and 10 cows within a 500-meter radius within the farm.

Experts were conducting epidemiological studies on a possible connection between the two farms, the ministry said.

The South Korean government confirmed last Saturday that an outbreak of bird flu in Iksan, 230 km south of Seoul, was caused by a highly virulent strain of H5N1 virus. About 236,000 chickens and other animals within a 500-meter radius of the initially infected farm had been culled and buried while transportation of all poultry-related products had been banned within a 10-km radiu around the farm since then.

In 2003 and 2004, South Korea destroyed 5.3 million poultry to prevent the spread of the disease.

Source: Xinhua