TOKYO—Japan said on Friday that it could be afflicted by its first outbreak of the lethal H5N1 bird flu strain in three years, as the disease killed an Indonesian woman and spread closer to Vietnam's largest city.
An official at a Jakarta hospital said on Friday that a woman had died of bird flu and four other people were being treated for bird flu symptoms.
The past week has seen a flare-up of infections, echoing past winters, the season when the virus appears to thrive.
Some 750 chickens died on a farm in the Miyazaki area of southwestern Japan on Wednesday and Thursday, an outbreak that if confirmed as due to H5N1 would be the first in Japan since 2004. There were no reports of human infections.
Masayuki Kunii, senior vice minister at Japan's Agriculture Ministry, told reporters on Friday: "It's not confirmed at this point that it's the highly virulent influenza, but the chances remain very high."
Results of a simple preliminary test for the bird flu virus were positive, but agricultural officials said it might take several days to determine the exact strain of the virus.
Tests could show as early as Saturday whether the strain is the H5 or H7 subtype, but more time is needed to see whether it is the virulent H5N1 or less virulent H5N2.
Officials said that considering the number of chickens that have died in a short period, the H5N1 strain could not be ruled out. No further bird deaths had been reported as of Friday morning.
If a bird flu outbreak is confirmed at the farm, located in Miyazaki on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, all of the more than 12,000 birds there would be culled.
Farm Under Quarantine
The farm has been placed under quarantine, and the agriculture ministry has prohibited any items from leaving a 10-km radius from the site of the suspected outbreak.
Between January and March in 2004, Japan had four outbreaks of the H5N1 type strain in poultry, including an outbreak in Kyoto in western Japan that led to the disposal of about 240,000 chickens and 20 million eggs.
In December 2004, the health ministry said at least one person had been infected with the virus after the Kyoto poultry farm outbreak and four others had also probably been infected, but that none of the five had developed symptoms.
Between June 2005 and January 2006, there were outbreaks of bird flu from the less virulent H5N2 strain at 41 Japanese farms. In Indonesia, which has the highest human death toll from bird flu of any nation, the number of deaths rose to 59 with the death of the 37-year-old woman on Thursday.
The woman's husband and son have also been hospitalised with bird flu symptoms. An official at the Jakarta hospital where they are being treated said that two other women were being treated for the same symptoms and their conditions were not good.
In Vietnam, where bird flu killed 42 of the 93 people infected from 2003-2005, a government report said bird flu in poultry has moved closer to Ho Chi Minh City, the nation's largest urban area.
The Agriculture Ministry report said tests done after 20 chickens were found dead on a farm in Vinh Long province some 137 km (85 miles) southwest of the city had confirmed the virus.
Vietnam has had no human H5N1 cases since November 2005 but the virus re-emerged last month in Mekong delta poultry.
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