Indian government responds to new avian flu outbreak

"Authorities in eastern India will start culling chickens and destroying eggs to contain a new outbreak of H5 bird flu, the government said in a statement on Tuesday, as a mutant strain of the virus is spreading elsewhere in Asia," Reuters reports (Williams, 9/20). "A mutant strain of avian influenza -- for which there is no vaccine -- appeared recently in China and Vietnam. But Indian authorities did not specify which strain of the H5N1 virus had been detected in the West Bengal region, which has been a hot spot for avian flu in the past," the Los Angeles Times' "Booster Shots" blog reports. The blog provides a link to track the movement of bird flu on the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's avian influenza pages and a link for additional information on the virus from the CDC (9/20).