H5N1 Confirmed on Farms in Poland
Recombinomics Commentary
December 1, 2007
Three poultry farms northwest of Warsaw were cordoned off after the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was found in turkeys, officials said on Saturday.
There are plans to cull 4,000 birds. The cases were found at farms around the village of Brudzen near the city of Plock, Poland's chief veterinary officer Ewa Lech said on television.
Lech said the virus was most likely brought to Poland by migrating ducks, geese or swans and an area within a 3-km radius of the outbreak had been cordoned off.
The above comments describe the first reported cases of H5N1 in domestic poultry in Poland. In the spring of 2006, H5N1 was reported in wild birds in Poland (swans and a hawk – see satellite map), at multiple locations to the west of the current outbreaks.
These outbreaks in domestic poultry in Poland follow recent reports of H5N1 on farms in Suffolk, England. The H5N1 in England was closely related to outbreaks in Germany, Czech Republic, France, Krasnodar, and Kuwait. All of these outbreaks were related to the Uva Lake sub-clade, detected in wild birds in Mongolia and Siberia in the summer of 2006. It is likely that the Uva Lake strain was circulating undetected in Europe in the winter and spring of this year. First reports of this strain were in the summer in the Czech Republic, Germany and France. Germany and the Czech Republic reported outbreaks in domestic poultry, but all of these western European countries reported H5N1 in wild birds. Over 300 wild bird positives were reported in Germany.
The confirmations in Poland follow domestic poultry outbreaks in the Danube delta region of Romania, as well as multiple locations in and around Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The multiple outbreaks described above raise serious surveillance questions in countries neighboring these recent confirmed outbreaks.
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