Seoul, Jan 6 (NationPress) South Korea has reported its 20th instance of highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) during this winter season at an egg farm in Gyeonggi Province, as stated by authorities on Monday.

The local government indicated that this latest case was identified at a layer poultry farm in Yeoju, situated approximately 65 kilometers east of Seoul on Saturday, according to a report from Yonhap news agency.

This represents the 20th confirmed case of highly pathogenic AI nationwide this winter.

In response, authorities have secured the area and culled around 104,000 chickens at the affected farm, in addition to culling another 52,000 chicks at a nearby broiler farm as a precautionary measure.

The previous case was identified on December 31 at an egg farm located in the central region of North Chungcheong Province.

This earlier case was confirmed at a layer hen farm in Eumseong County, roughly 90 kilometers southeast of Seoul, as reported by officials.

The farm owner initially reported a spike in mortality among the livestock.

Authorities have quarantined the area and decided to cull approximately 44,000 chickens from that farm.

Meanwhile, a team from the Diagnostics Development Hub (DxD Hub)—a national initiative supported by the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, in collaboration with Japanese researchers—has developed Steadfast, a state-of-the-art diagnostic kit for the detection of the highly pathogenic H5N1 Avian Influenza Virus (AIV).

This advancement signifies a major achievement in the monitoring of avian influenza, enhancing global efforts toward pandemic readiness, according to the team.

Steadfast enables rapid detection of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus and can distinguish between highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) strains, which is crucial for implementing effective control measures.

While traditional sequencing techniques may take two to three days to yield results, Steadfast can identify HPAI H5 strains (H5N1, H5N5, H5N6) within approximately three hours.

Recently, the highly pathogenic bird flu virus has resulted in widespread fatalities among chickens and wild birds on a global scale. These infections have also been transmitted to seals, cats, cattle, and even from cattle to humans, posing an increased risk of a potential future pandemic virus.