| Canadian
health officials have found the H5 strain of the avian influenza
virus in nearly three dozen wild ducks in Quebec and Manitoba,
a Fox News report said. However, the experts stressed that
it was unlikely that the strain was the same one that has
been spreading east from Asia.
Dr.
Jim Clark of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it
would take at least a week to determine whether the avian
influenza strain found in 33 ducks from the provinces of
Quebec and Manitoba was the deadly H5N1 strain that has
ravaged Asian poultry industries and has been blamed for
the deaths of more than 60 people - mainly in Vietnam and
Thailand.
Clark
said it is unlikely that the strain of the virus found in
the Canadian ducks was the Asian strain because none of
the wild ducks tested was ill.
"(The)
strain in Asia has caused high mortality in those birds,"
he explained. "The birds that tested positive in Quebec
and Manitoba are all healthy."
Clark
said 4,800 samples had been collected from wild birds in
seven Canadian provinces in a study begun before the recent
spread of H5N1 from Asia to parts of Europe and Turkey.
He added that it was not surprising to find a variant of
the H5 virus in Canada because it can be present in at least
seven percent of wild birds in North America - but in a
less virulent form than the H5N1 strain.
The
spread of H5N1 across the Eurasian land mass has world health
experts worried about the possibility of a human flu pandemic
developing that could kill millions and cripple economies.
The further the virus spreads, the more chances it has to
mutate into a form that can pass easily from human to human.
So far, all the deaths attributed to H5N1 have come in people
who contracted it from an infected bird.
Less
virulent strains of the H5 virus have been found before
in North America. Parts of Mexico have suffered through
an outbreak of H5N2 bird flu in poultry operations for more
than a decade. Canada had an avian influenza outbreak in
2004, but it was the less harmful H7 virus, which isn't
believed to pose a serious risk to humans.
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