Austria's Health Ministry declares whole country an avian influenza high risk area

Avian influenza is a highly contagious viral disease that occurs mainly in poultry and wild water birds but transmission to humans remains rare.

Transcript

00:00Austria's health ministry has declared the whole country a risk area for bird flu.

00:07That announcement follows an outbreak of the virus in the Amstetten district of Lower Austria

00:12a week ago, which led to the culling of around 18,000 animals.

00:16New cases have recently been detected in four farms with around 200,000 animals in Upper

00:22and Lower Austria.

00:24A protection zone has been set up around the affected farms within a radius of three kilometres.

00:30Vets will be checking 78 farms within the zone for any cases of bird flu.

00:35And a surveillance zone has been set up within a radius of 10 kilometres.

00:54Authorities don't yet know how the first infections in Austria started, but cases were first discovered

01:08in wild birds and domestic poultry in September.

01:11That was around the same time as catastrophic flooding hit several areas of Lower Austria.

01:17Avian influenza is a highly contagious viral disease that occurs mainly in poultry and

01:22wild water birds.

01:24It generally causes severe disease or death in the host animal.

01:28But transmission to humans is still rare and limited to those in close contact with infected

01:33animals and contaminated spaces.