China has reported an outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu in the country’s Hunan province amid a rapidly spreading coronavirus epidemic.
The country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced the development on Saturday.
The virus was detected on a farm with nearly 8,000 chickens – more than half of them have already died because of the outbreak, according to local media.
However, China is not alone in trying to tamp down the spread of this virus. Earlier this week, authorities in India started culling chickens and destroying eggs to contain the bird flu virus.
And a different strain – the H5N8 virus – has spread throughout eastern Europe in recent weeks.
A bird flu outbreak in China back in 2013 ended up costing $6.5 billion in economic losses, according to UN experts.
