Bird flu has been detected at a chicken farm in Hiroshima prefecture, The Japan Times reported citing local government officials on Monday.
The authorities ordered culled down 134,000 chickens at the site and other affiliated farms.
The H5 strain, which is yet to be confirmed as a highly pathogenic type, made Hiroshima the sixth prefecture to experience an avian flu outbreak this season. All of the cases have been centred in western Japan, The Japan Times reported.
Bird flu in Japan comes at a time when the world is battling with COVID-19 pandemic, which has become a health crisis.
The farm in Mihara on Sunday reported to the local government that a number of chickens had died. A polymerase chain reaction test in the early hours Monday following a preliminary test earlier confirmed H5 virus infection, The Japan Times quoted Hiroshima government as saying.
There are about 40 chicken farms in the city, containing some 760,000 chickens in total, the government added.
Several movement control points were set up around the affected farms to disinfect the vehicles moving through the areas, while Hidehiko Yuzaki, current governor of Hiroshima Prefecture requested the deployment of Self-Defense Force troops to help with the culling.
This year the first case was reported in Kagawa Prefecture in early November, followed by Fukuoka, Hyogo, Miyazaki and Nara prefectures wherein the local government carried out massive culls of chickens in and around infected farms.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Japan has reached 164,379, the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine reported on Monday.
( With inputs from ANI )
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