Bird Flu Outbreak Shuts Farms Near Moscow

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 21, 2007
Farms and markets in the suburbs of Moscow were shut down by outbreaks of the avian flu over the weekend in a sign that the virus was moving westward along migratory bird routes, as it did last winter.

Russian authorities confirmed Sunday that the H5N1 strain of the flu had been found on at least six farms within 30 miles of the capital. All appeared to be linked to Moscow?s main live poultry market in Sadovod, nicknamed the Bird Market.

Masked officials were guarding empty stalls there on Monday, Reuters reported, and the police set up roadblocks around five villages, turning away visitors, searching outgoing vehicles for poultry and spraying disinfectant on tires.

A Moscow prosecutor confirmed that residents of the villages had bought birds at the Sadovod market since Feb. 5.

More than 5,000 residents will be monitored for signs of illness, including 20 people who were in direct contact with infected animals, said the country?s chief epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, according to Russian news agencies. Officials announced plans to vaccinate one million birds.

A federal agriculture official appeared on state television to tell people not to panic because ?in the Russian winter, poultry stay indoors.?

In January, three H5N1 outbreaks were found in Krasnodar, a Russian region on the edge of the Black Sea. Since December, die-offs have been reported in domestic and wild birds in other countries bordering or near the Black Sea, including Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia ? the same countries where migrating birds brought the flu in the winter of 2005-06.

Although it is too early to be certain, the pattern of the Moscow outbreak makes it likely that it was caused by poultry trucked north, not by migrating birds.

The flu has also been found in Hungary and England, but it is believed to have traveled to Britain in tons of raw turkey shipped between Hungarian and British plants owned by the same company.

Early last winter, multiple outbreaks of H5N1 were reported in Romania, Turkey and Azerbaijan, in some cases spreading to humans and killing them. Scientists later concluded that bar-headed geese and other migratory waterfowl picked up the virus during a die-off of thousands of birds at Qinghai Lake, in northwest China, in May 2005. They presumably carried it to summering grounds in Mongolia and Siberia.

That fall, whooper swans and other birds migrating southwest in unusually cold weather probably carried it to the Black Sea region and Western Europe, and possibly from there to Egypt and Africa.

More attention was paid in the Western news media last February after dead infected swans turned up in Italy, Greece and Germany and the virus spread from a French pond to a nearby poultry operation. Other isolated outbreaks were found in Denmark, Poland, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Pakistan and Jordan.

Most of those outbreaks were snuffed out by veterinary officials or died out spontaneously, but the disease continues to fulminate in poultry in Egypt and Nigeria.

The flu also appears to be on the move in new parts of Asia. A zoo in Islamabad, Pakistan?s capital, was shut down for disinfection yesterday after H5N1 was found in peacocks and geese there. The virus was also detected in Laos for the first time in seven months, Reuters reported.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/world/europe/21flu.html?ref=health