H5 Confirmed in Tibet
Recombinomics Commentary
March 6, 2007
Poultry from a market in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, have been found to be infected with the bird flu virus, China's Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) announced on Tuesday.
The birds had died in the market on March 1 and tests for the H5 virus by the National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory were positive, according to the information office of the MOA.
Specialists believe the virus was introduced by wild birds migrating from east Africa to west Asia as no outbreaks of the disease had been reported in the source areas of the poultry.
The above comments describe an H5 outbreak that will almost certainly be linked to the Qinghai strain (clade 2.2) of H5N1. Although reporting has been limited, the above outbreak is likely to be linked to recent outbreaks in Kuwait, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.
Wild birds define a number of H5N1 transmission routes. The Qinghai strain is most easily tracked because its reported introduction into regions west of China began in the summer of 2005, but the sequences provide clear pathways which link isolates in western China, including Qinghai province.
Sequence data from the recent isolates would be useful.
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