Bird flu reaches Honshu! Are you prepared?
After two outbreaks were detected in Miyazaki prefecture earlier this month, it appears that the deadily H5N1 strain of bird flu has finally spread north:
Bird flu is suspected in the deaths of 17 chickens at a farm in western Japan, the agriculture ministry said, as it confirmed an earlier outbreak of bird flu was caused by the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.
Authorities were investigating a possible outbreak at a poultry farm in Takahashi, Okayama Prefecture, where 17 birds had died since Friday, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said in a statement Saturday.
“The number of deaths is small, but we decided it was better to announce the possibility of an outbreak sooner rather than later,” ministry official Yasushi Yamaguchi said.
The dead birds would be checked at an animal health facility in the state for the bird flu virus, he said.
In the meantime, the remaining 12,000 birds at the farm would be quarantined, while neighboring farms asked to keep a watch on their own poultry stocks, the statement said.
The news came hours after the ministry reported that tests had confirmed the H5N1 virus killed 3,000 chickens at a poultry farm in southern Japan earlier this week. H5N1 can be deadly to humans
A state laboratory had analyzed samples taken from the dead birds from a farm in Hyuga in Miyazaki prefecture, Japan’s main chicken-producing region, and found they had been infected with H5N1, the ministry said in a statement.
No cases of human infection have been reported in Japan. However, that shouldn’t stop you from preparing for the inevitable outbreak. When the outbreak occurs, people will quickly raid the supermarkets of food and hide indoors while those foolish enough to venture outside will quickly contract the flu and die. As a precaution, I recommend you stockpile a few hundred gallons of water, a portable gas burner with plenty of gas, and a 6 month supply of instant ramen.
Anyone else got survival tips?
