Originally published August 21 2005
Bird flu spreads to Siberia and Mongolia
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The deadly H5N1 strain of the avian flu, which has killed more than 50 people in Asia since 2003, has now spread into Siberia and Mongolia, although no humans have yet been infected there.
A bird flu outbreak extended its reach in Russian Siberia and spread to Mongolia on Wednesday, and neighboring Kazakhstan confirmed a fowl virus found in the Central Asian state could kill humans.
Outbreaks in the ex-Soviet bloc raised fears the virus could infect humans and trigger a global epidemic.
In Siberia's Novosibirsk region, officials found the virus in another village, Novorozino, taking the total number of infected areas there to 14, Interfax news agency reported.
The total number of bird deaths since the epidemic hit Siberia in mid-July rose to 8,347 on Wednesday, the Emergencies Ministry said.
In Kazakhstan, which shares a long border with Siberia, the Agriculture Ministry confirmed that the virus found in birds was the deadly H5N1 strain.
The ministry, which reported an outbreak of avian flu on Aug. 4, said a quarantine was in place in the affected area near the Golubovka village in northern Kazakhstan's Pavlodar region.
In Mongolia, which also shares a border with Russia, nearly 80 migratory birds have died from bird flu, the first time the disease has been reported in the country, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.
There are no known cases of H5N1 bird flu passing from one human to another, but some health officials fear that the virus could mutate and create a pandemic to rival the 40 million people killed by Spanish flu at the end of World War One.
Kazakhstan, roughly the size of Western Europe with a population of just 15 million people, sought to play down fears of a growing problem.
"The epizootic situation in (Kazakhstan's) poultry farms is safe," the agriculture ministry said.
"As of Aug. 9 there have been no reports of new outbreaks of the disease among poultry or wildfowl in the republic."
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