South Korea says sixth bird flu case confirmed

Seoul, Feb 10: South Korea has confirmed a sixth case of bird flu despite the culling of poultry after earlier cases, officials said today, raising concerns that quarantine measures had failed to control the outbreak.

The latest case occurred at a poultry farm in Ansong, Kyonggi Province, around 66 km south of the capital, Seoul, and about 24 km from Chonan, where the fifth case was found.

''We confirmed that a case at a farm in Ansong was highly pathogenic,'' an Agricultural Ministry official said.

Quarantine authorities plan to cull poultry within a 3-km radius of the infected farm, an official of Ansong said.

There were no reports suggesting human infection.

In November South Korea confirmed its first case of the H5N1 strain in about three years.

Bird flu has killed more than 160 people globally over the past four years. It largely remains an animal disease, but the big concern is that it could mutate into a disease that easily passes from human-to-human triggering a global pandemic.

Reuters