VIENNA (Sputnik) — An outbreak of a severely contagious strain of bird flu has been confirmed on a poultry farm in western Austria, the country’s health ministry BMGF announced Friday.
"BMGF confirms the case of a highly pathogenic H5N8 virus on a turkey farm on the shore of Lake Constance in Vorarlberg," the statement read.
The affected farm lies close to where infected wild bird carcasses were found, the ministry said. It has been put on quarantine, with a two-mile buffer and a wider six-mile control zone set up around it. The agency plans to cull 1,100 birds.
The World Health Organization for Animal Health has registered bird flu in Germany, Switzerland and Croatia. The H5N8 strain is extremely contagious in birds but does not transmit to humans.
