PRAGUE, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Czech veterinarians began culling around 15,000 ducks on a factory farm in the country's South Bohemian region on Monday, due to a bird flu outbreak.
There were originally around 22,000 birds on the farm in Frahelz, but several thousand have died in the past week. It is the largest outbreak of bird flu ever detected in the region, according to the Czech News Agency (CTK).
The ducks were infected with the highly pathogenic bird flu H5N1 by wild waterfowl, reported the CTK.
State veterinarians have delineated a three-kilometer protective zone around the farm, and a ten-kilometer surveillance zone. The movement of birds within these zones is being strictly monitored.
Previously, the Czech Republic had not detected an outbreak of bird flu for seven months, although there have been several outbreaks in the country in recent years.
In January 2020, authorities detected the first outbreak in three years. The next month, another outbreak was found at a factory farm in the central Pardubice region, resulting in the culling of over 100,000 poultry in order to contain a highly pathogenic sub-strain of H5N8. ■