Romanian Authorities Counter Bird Flu Outbreak

Under the coordination of the county prefect, institutions involved in the containment and eradication of the disease developed a plan of measures based on which hunting might be controlled.

According to the decision of the Anti-Epizootic Command Center chief, any stray, by hunters, from the obligations received through the monitoring program for the containment of the disease would lead to the immediate cease of the hunting party.

At the same time household inspections in Tulcea county locality Murighiol are continuing.

Friday and Saturday, 53 households in Murighiol were inspected. Inspectors found 580 chickens, 41 hens, 79 ducks, and 149 geese, and they collected 27 blood samples and 156 tracheal samples from gallinaceans.

At the same time, authorities are continuously monitoring households in the surveillance perimeter.

Samples collected so far, from wild and domestic birds, in the protection area and the localities within the surveillance perimeter, were lab tested, and the results obtained, including those from Friday and Saturday, were negative regarding the presence of the bird flu virus.

Mixed teams, containing veterinarians within the Tulcea Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority Tulcea and representatives of the other institutions involved in the eradication of the disease, are monitoring the health of birds in the entire county, through clinical exams, as well as through the collection of blood samples and tracheal samples, which are sent to the lab for testing.

Teams from the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform are checking how restrictions are observed regarding animal movement, the transport and selling of birds and that commercialization of bird products.

The Romanian Ministry of Health announced that it is in the end-phase of vaccination, for the people in localities found in the protection area, against the bird flu.

The Romanian National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority confirmed, Wednesday, a bird flu outbreak in a household in Murghiol, Tulcea county, and the institution informed the European Commission on this situation. The Diagnosis and Animal health Institute established that the virus string is of type H5N1.