Seoul - Quarantine officials killed all poultry in the South Korean capital Seoul in an effort to prevent the spread of the bird flu virus in the metropolitan area, a city official said Tuesday. The mass culling came following a new outbreak outbreak of bird flu in the capital on Sunday, the official said.
The virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu was confirmed to have reached Seoul a week ago, when the result of an investigation into the cause of death of pheasants and chickens at an aviary run by a district office in the eastern part of the city was released.
H5N1 is a highly pathogenic bird flu strain that has previously been proven fatal.
8,200 chickens and ducks have been killed in Seoul first and about 15,000 poultry were culled in total, including those raised outdoors in city outskirts and birds raised at schools for educational purposes, officials said.
They said, they expect that the bird flu will no longer spread in the downtown area.
Seoul city officials said they will seek permission from the Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forestry to halt all sales of live chickens and ducks. They also seek to ban all delivery of live chicken and ducks into the city.
The ministry announced, meanwhile, that quarantine officials are to decontaminate chicken and duck farms throughout the country until the end of May.
About 7 million birds have been slaughtered in South Korea so far since the first of some 37 confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 was reported in early April.
Officials said that this year's bird flu outbreak is expected to result in the greatest losses so far.
During an outbreak in 2003-2004, 5.28 million birds were culled, while an outbreak in 2006-2007 resulted in 2.8 million birds being destroyed.
