Property damage and business interruption

9.3, birdflu

Asia: the deadly bird flu virus spread into southern provinces of impoverished, landlocked Laos after outbreaks near Vientiane. Officials planned to cull up to 200,000 fowl to stamp out confirmed and suspected outbreaks in the southern provinces of Savannakhet and Champasak and stop the H5N1 virus in and around the capital. The campaign comes a day after Lao health officials confirmed the country’s first death from H5N1, a 15-year-old girl who died in a hospital in neighbouring Thailand. A 42-year-old Lao woman died of suspected bird flu a week earlier, but tests have not yet confirmed the H5N1 virus. The teenage girl had lived in a suburb of Vientiane where the virus was found in poultry in January, the country’s first outbreak in seven months. The government said that H5N1 hit villages a week ago in Champasak, which borders Thailand and Cambodia. Tests were also being conducted on chickens which died in Savannakhet, which is sandwiched between Vietnam and Thailand. The government believed that the virus may be spreading due to illegal trade in fowl despite a ban on poultry imports. Bird flu was also detected in ducks in southern Vietnam two months since the last infection in poultry there, leading to the slaughter of 800 ducks. Tests found the virus in the 45-day-old waterfowl in the Mekong delta province of Vinh Long, the ministry’s Animal Health Department said in a report. It said the ducks had not been vaccinated against the deadly H5N1 virus.