Tuesday, February 3, 2015

South Korea Confirms New Case of Bird Flu in a Dog

2/3/2015

SEOUL – South Korea confirmed Monday that a dog has been found infected with avian flu, the first such case since last March, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said at a press briefing.

One of three dogs tested for the disease at a duck farm in December tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N8 strain of the virus, officials said.

The ministry explained that the fact that none of the three dogs had shown any symptoms of the virus when their DNA samples were collected for tests and no antigens nor antibodies were found in the samples collected from the other two dogs showed that there had been no dog-to-dog transmission of the virus.

It is believed that the affected dog could have contracted the flu by eating animals infected with the disease.

In March 2014, 11 dogs around the country tested positive for the disease.

All 447 workers at the affected farms have been checked for the virus but none have tested positive.

The ministry said that no human infection of the H5N8 virus has been reported in Korea so far.

Since the last outbreak of bird flu last September, South Korea has slaughtered more than 11 million animals, mostly poultry.


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