Avian influenza is a highly contagious viral disease that occurs mainly in poultry and wild water birds but transmission to humans remains rare.
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00:00Austria's health ministry has declared the whole country a risk area for bird flu.
00:07That announcement follows an outbreak of the virus in the Amstetten district of Lower Austria
00:12a week ago, which led to the culling of around 18,000 animals.
00:16New cases have recently been detected in four farms with around 200,000 animals in Upper
00:22and Lower Austria.
00:24A protection zone has been set up around the affected farms within a radius of three kilometres.
00:30Vets will be checking 78 farms within the zone for any cases of bird flu.
00:35And a surveillance zone has been set up within a radius of 10 kilometres.
00:54Authorities don't yet know how the first infections in Austria started, but cases were first discovered
01:08in wild birds and domestic poultry in September.
01:11That was around the same time as catastrophic flooding hit several areas of Lower Austria.
01:17Avian influenza is a highly contagious viral disease that occurs mainly in poultry and
01:22wild water birds.
01:24It generally causes severe disease or death in the host animal.
01:28But transmission to humans is still rare and limited to those in close contact with infected
01:33animals and contaminated spaces.