Japan awaits results in suspected bird flu case

TOKYO, Jan 12 (Reuters) Japanese authorities expect test results as early as tomorrow on a case of suspected bird flu in southwestern Japan and said today that the lethal H5N1 strain could not be ruled out.

If confirmed, it would be Japan's first case of the H5N1 strain since 2004.

Results of a simple preliminary test for the bird flu virus were positive, but final results may not be available until tomorrow or later.

''We are presently carrying out tests and cannot say with certainty which strain of bird flu it could be,'' an Agriculture Ministry official said today.

''Given the number of birds that have died, H5N1 cannot be ruled out.'' Some 750 chickens died on Wednesday and yesterday on a farm in Miyazaki, an area devoted mainly to forestry and farming on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu that says it is Japan's top breeder of chickens. There were no reports of human infection.

The Agriculture Ministry said that should bird flu be confirmed on the farm, which has over 12,000 birds, all birds there would be destroyed.

The farm in the town of Kiyotake has been placed in quarantine, and local authorities are investigating nearby farms and urging people there to restrict their movements.

An Agriculture Ministry official yesterday said that local authorities were also urging people to stay away from the area.

According to Miyazaki, the number of chickens being raised in the area for meat was 18.4 million birds as of Feb. 1, 2006.

Between January and March in 2004, Japan had four outbreaks of the H5N1 type strain in poultry, including an outbreak in Kyoto in western Japan in February 2004 that led to the disposal of about 240,000 chickens and 20 million eggs.

In December 2004, the Health Ministry said at least one person had been infected with the virus after the Kyoto poultry farm outbreak and four others had also probably been infected, but added that none of the five had developed symptoms of the disease.

Hospital officials in Indonesia said on Friday that a woman there had died of H5N1 bird flu, bringing the country's human death toll to 59.

South Korea's healthy ministry said yesterday that a person was infected with bird flu late last year, after an outbreak of the H5N1 strain first hit poultry farms in the country last November, but had not developed any serious illness.

According to the most recent figures from the World Health Organisation, 158 people have been killed by the virus since 2003.

In Japan, a less virulent strain of bird flu, caused by the H5N2 virus, was found in a poultry farm in Ibaraki prefecture in June 2005, and since then, there have been outbreaks of the weaker strain at 41 farms, the last one in January 2006.

The Health Ministry has said at least 77 people may have been infected by the H5N2 virus, but that none showed any symptoms.

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