Australia reports deadly bird flu in New South Wales
PARIS (Reuters) – Australia has reported its first case of a highly pathogenic bird flu virus in 15 years at an egg farm in the New South Wales region, the World animal health body OIE said on Thursday. So far 5,000 poultry have died in the infected farm in Maitland, 160 km (100 miles) north of Sydney, but 50,000 are at risk, a report by the Australian agriculture ministry to the Paris-based OIE said. The virus, detected last week, is different from the deadly H5N1 strain, which was first detected in 1997 in Hong Kong and has since devastated duck and chicken and caused hundreds of deaths. …
