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Canada confirms bird flu case is low-risk variety
By (Agencies)
Updated: 2004-02-23 11:10

Canadian health officials confirmed on Friday that the case of bird flu discovered this week in British Columbia was a low-risk variety, and are confident it was confined to the chicken farm where the outbreak was discovered.

"Test results received today indicate that we are dealing with a low-pathogenic strain of the virus," Cornelius Kiley, a veterinarian with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, told reporters in Abbotsford, near where the disease was discovered.

Officials said that five workers at the farm had shown mild symptoms of diseases they may have contracted from the birds, but the H7 strain of the flu found in the chickens was not the type of bird flu that could also be transmitted from human to human.

"We're not concerned about it spreading to household members, because that virtually never happens," said Andrew Larder of the Fraser Health Authority, which is responsible for human health services in the area about 70 km (45 miles) east of Vancouver.

All but one of the five people who showed signs of illnesses have already recovered.

The H7 strain is not the same strain of avian influenza at the center of an outbreak in Asia that has been linked to the deaths of 22 people in Vietnam and Thailand. Four outbreaks of the H7 strain have been reported in Canada since 1975.

The discovery of bird flu at the farm in Matsqui, British Columbia, prompted Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong to temporarily ban all poultry imports from Canada.

Officials had said on Thursday the strain was H7 but needed more tests to determine if it was the high-pathogenic variety, which could spread more quickly between chickens and pose a greater threat to other farms.

Kiley said the CFIA may never determine how the commercial broiler and breeder chicken farm became infected, but the disease was likely contracted from the many ducks and other wild birds in the area along the Fraser River.

On Friday, agriculture officials began destroying 16,000 birds in two flocks at the farm that showed symptoms of the disease, and were increasingly confident it had not spread to other farms in the region.

"We have a good level of confidence that is has been isolated to this farm," Kiley said.

Officials said that the quick discovery of the disease and its isolation to a single farm showed that Canada's agricultural health system worked just as it had in 2000 in a similar case of avian influenza.

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