Quarantine officials from the Council of Agriculture (COA) say that a new strain of bird flu in Taiwan is not connected to the one in China.
The officials said Friday that, the Animal Health Research Institute has determined that the new flu is a variant of the 2.3.4.4 type virus. They say it is quite different from the H5N2-D7 flu in China, which is a variant of 2.3.2 virus.
The quarantine officials say that a detailed inspection of the new virus’ DNA sequence showed a 98.8% similarity to a strain of bird flu found in South Korea in 2014. Therefore, they say, it’s highly possible that it was brought by the same flock of birds.
Officials say that the most effective way to contain Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza is mass culling, rather than vaccinating the birds. They say that in line with many countries, Taiwan prohibits the import of vaccinations and has no plans to use them as a way of containing the virus.