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Russia prepares for possible spread of bird flu in Far East

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MOSCOW, March 1 28 (RIA Novosti, Veronika Perminova) - The Emergency Situations Ministry has conducted a special exercise to prepare for possible outbreaks of bird flu in Russia's Far East, a local veterinary official said Wednesday.

The exercise, held in the Primorye Territory whose administrative center Vladivostok is about 6,000 east of Moscow, consisted of ministry units practicing measures to contain a bird flu epidemic primarily among domestic fowl, the spokesman said.

No cases of bird flu among humans or domestic birds have been reported in Primorye, which borders on China, but officials fear that avian influenza might spread to the region through migrating birds from the neighboring country, where the deadly disease has left several people dead.

The Emergency Situations Ministry issued a dire warning in January that between 18% and 20% of the population could be infected with bird flu if a pandemic were to hit the country.

A ministry analytical center forecasted that 27 million out of the country's population of 148 million could fall ill if a pandemic of avian influenza broke out. Analysts were particularly concerned about the potential threats at airports receiving flights from China in such densely populated cities as Moscow and St. Petersburg in European Russia, and Vladivostok and Khabarovsk in the Far East.

Experts added that a pandemic of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu might become a national security threat in 2006 since the virus could mutate and become more contagious.

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