Laboratory results in February 2007 confirmed H5N1 bird flu at one of three farms under investigation near Moscow, marking the first time the strain had appeared in proximity to the Russian capital, a city of more than 10 million people.
Authorities said the precise viral subtype would be determined by Sunday evening and could either match the more dangerous Asian variant or prove to be a milder form. All birds at the three affected farms had been purchased at a poultry market in Moscow, prompting television stations to appeal to anyone who had bought birds there. The farms were disinfected and quarantined.
Veterinary teams collected blood samples from domestic birds within three kilometres of the first two sites and maintained visual surveillance within a 10-kilometre radius. A third farm, 40 kilometres south of the capital, reported 44 dead birds on Saturday, raising suspicion of a wider spread.
No human infections were detected. Chief epidemiologist Gennady Onischenko said there were no confirmed or suspected human cases, contradicting earlier reports of hospitalized farmers. H5N1 had already been found in Russia's Krasnodar region in late January, roughly 1,000 kilometres south of Moscow.
The strain had caused 270 reported human infections globally since 2003 and killed 164 as of the previous month. A 2006 outbreak killed four people in Türkiye and five in Azerbaijan. Recent H5N1 cases had also been confirmed in Britain and Türkiye, and Hungary reported the first EU outbreak since mid-2006. Experts fear the virus could trigger a pandemic if it mutates into a form transmissible between humans.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in February 2007, in its own words.