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TOKYO: Bird flu has been detected in a fourth Japanese prefecture, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Tuesday (December 1), as a wave of infections in poultry farms triggered the country’s worst outbreak in more than four years.
Avian influenza was discovered at a poultry farm in the city of Hyuga in Miyazaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in southwestern Japan, the ministry said on its website. There is no possibility of humans getting bird flu from eating poultry or eggs, the ministry said.
Japan’s worst outbreak since at least 2016 started last month in Kagawa prefecture on Shikoku Island, which is adjacent to Kyushu Island.
The 40,000 chickens on the Miyazaki farm will be slaughtered and buried, while exports will be restricted within a 3 km (1.8 mile) radius around the farm.
The new action means that more than 1.8 million chickens will have been culled since the last outbreak began.
The last outbreak of bird flu in Japan was in January 2018, also in Kagawa prefecture, when 91,000 chickens were slaughtered.
The last major outbreak was between November 2016 and March 2017, when a total of 1.67 million chickens were culled due to the H5N6 strain of bird flu.
Bird flu is reported worldwide and South Korea on Tuesday confirmed another case in an outbreak that has led to the slaughter of about 400,000 chickens and ducks.
In Europe, the poultry industry is on alert because a highly contagious and deadly form of bird flu is rapidly spreading across the continent.
