North Korea Confirms Bird Flu Outbreak

CNN reports North Korea acknowledges that it has an outbreak of avian flu:

"Hundreds of thousands" of chickens were burned before burial to prevent spread of the disease, which can spread to humans, the country's official media outlet Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday.

However, KCNA said North Korea had no reports of human infection.

According to CNN, it's not clear whether the North Korean outbreak involves the H5N1 virus which has been known to jump from birds to humans:

Since late 2003, WHO has registered a total of 69 human cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu. Forty-six of those were fatal -- 33 in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and one in Cambodia.

In January 2004 California Yankee posted:

The three largest influenza epidemics of the 20th century are believed to have started in birds. The A(H5N1) strain now killing chickens across East Asia and infecting humans in Southeast Asia appears to be especially lethal.

[. . .]

The A(H5N1) virus was first documented to have jumped to people in 1997, when sick chickens infected 18 people in Hong Kong, including previously healthy adults, killing 6. All 1.5 million chickens there were slaughtered within three days, a step some influenza experts have credited as preventing a global epidemic.