Medical workers were going door-to-door to look for people with symptoms of avian influenza in northeast India Friday as the infection in birds spread further.

So far, no human cases of infection of the deadly H5N1 virus have been reported in the affected Assam state, but authorities stepped up a health drive after 150 people developed some symptoms of the infection.

About 150 people were treated for fever and upper respiratory tract infections in bird flu-hit areas. We have put the patients in isolation.

Bird flu was ruled out in all cases, the official said.

The virus has spread in the past two weeks across six Assam districts, where an estimated 300,000 people live in the affected areas.

More than 250,000 poultry have been slaughtered so far and an estimated 150,000 more have been ordered to be killed.

The government was “worried” about the infection spreading to humans, as authorities may not be able to cope, local health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.

The sale of poultry and poultry products has been banned in most parts of the state.

India reported its worst outbreak of bird flu early this year in the eastern state of West Bengal.

The WHO says the deadly H5N1 strain has killed nearly 250 people, mostly in Southeast Asia, since 2003.

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Fears grow that bird flu virus has entered food chain

The avian flu virus that led to the culling of 160,000 farm turkeys may have entered the human food supply, Government food safety experts admitted.

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The world should expect more bird flu outbreaks in the coming months, the U.N. official coordinating the global fight against the virus warned, after Britain recorded its first case of the H5N1 strain on a commercial farm.

Dr. David Nabarro said, however, that he did not expect the virus to spread in Britain to neighboring farms because of the quick containment measures put in place by the government.

“This should mean that there won’t therefore be spread … into other parts in the vicinity,” he (more…)

Are you ready for the bird flu or have you forgotten about it like most? Once again the bird flu is marching across Asia.

An Indonesian hospital was on Monday overwhelmed with patients suffering bird flu symptoms while the virus spread further among flocks in Vietnam and flared anew in Thailand.

A recent spurt of human infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, which re-emerged in Asia in late 2003, has alarmed health officials.

Four Indonesians have died this year after a six-week lull in cases, taking the number of people killed by bird flu in the country to 61, the highest in the world.

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A dead bird found in Hong Kong has tested positive for a mildr strain of the bird flu virus, the city’s health authorities said.

“Preliminary testing of a dead bird … indicate a suspected case of H5 avian influenza,” a spokesman for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said in a statement.

Further tests are now being carried out on the carcass of the Crested Hoshawk, which was found by a member of the public, the statement added.

Hong Kong was the scene of the world’s first reported major bird flu outbreak among humans in 1997, when six people died of a then unknown mutation of the avian flu virus. Millions of poultry were culled.

A renewed outbreak in 2003 among poultry flocks in Asia triggered a wave of bird flu infections worldwide.

The bird flu’s H5N1 strain is potentially deadly to humans. Bird flu has killed more than 150 people worldwide since late 2003. There are fears it could mutate and trigger a deadly human flu pandemic.

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‘War games’ have exposed serious flaws in government plans for fighting a deadly influenza pandemic, reports Roger Highfield

The first cases appeared in Glasgow in May. During the following months the influenza virus killed a quarter of a million people in Britain. Worldwide, the death toll was about 50 million. One doctor said it was “the most vicious type of pneumonia that has ever been seen”.

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