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Wrap: Over 700,000 Russian birds lost to spread of bird flu

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MOSCOW, January 12 (RIA Novosti) - Almost 715,000 birds have died from bird flu in Russia since July 2005 or been culled in an effort to stem the spread of the virus, Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said Thursday.

The first wave of avian flu swept through six Russian regions of the Volga and Urals federal districts from July 21 to September 29, 2005. The second outbreak was registered on October 14, 2005 in five regions of the Central, Volga, Urals and Siberian federal districts.

The ministry said it was currently controlling the situation in the south of Russia to prevent the virus, also potentially deadly to people, from spreading.

Controls in other Russian regions have been lifted following the end of the standard 21-day quarantine period, the ministry added.

Concerns were heightened after the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu was discovered in eastern Turkey at the beginning of the year. The virus has already claimed the lives of at least two people in Turkey and the World Health Organization has confirmed 14 other human cases.

Russia's chief doctor said it would be incorrect to call human cases of bird flu in Turkey an epidemic.

Gennady Onishchenko said at a business lunch hosted by popular Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta that it was impossible to calculate the disease's epidemic threshold because the disease was not transmitted from human to human.

He said an epidemic was when the infection rate exceeded the norm by four times, but questioned whether 15 cases of a previously unrecorded disease in Turkey could be called an epidemic.

A senior official from the Russian Flu Research Center said Thursday that Russia could begin large-scale production of a vaccine to prevent bird flu by April. Center director Oleg Kiselyov told a news conference: "We need to complete our tests [on the vaccine] ... I hope it will be in production in April."

Kiselyov said that he believed the world could potentially see a major, wide-scale outbreak of bird flu within the next couple of years. Developing a vaccine against such a pandemic strain of the virus would take about nine months, he said.

The Russian Ministry of Agriculture has been coordinating the production of 100 million doses of the vaccine for domestic fowl in Siberia, and regions of the Urals Federal District, which are close to stopover sites used by migrating birds, according to Federal Consumer Rights and Welfare Service chief Gennady Onishchenko. Vaccinations will begin in spring, when young birds appear, he added.

The speaker of the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, said the Russian government would allocate more than 1 billion rubles ($35 million) in 2006 to vaccinations against bird flu.

Parliament's budget and tax committee would also discuss using reserve funds to help control the spread of the virus, using measures such as border controls, speaker Boris Gryzlov said.

Meanwhile, a dead pigeon discovered in western Georgia on Thursday caused panic among local residents, according to local television.

Reports said the bird was found near the central market in the town of Zugdidi, about 300 kilometers (190 miles) west of the capital, Tbilisi.

Witnesses said the pigeon was sitting on an electricity transmission line and then suddenly plummeted to the ground. "It must have been ill with bird flu," people who gathered around the dead bird are reported to have said.

Local veterinaries examined the pigeon, and said it had not been infected with bird flu, a television channel, Imedi, said.

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