The Emergencies Ministry has admitted that an outbreak of bird flu in Chelyabinsk, in the Ural mountains, is dangerous to humans. Nearly 500 birds had died over the past 24 hours.

Teams of sanitary workers have destroyed birds to prevent the westward spread of the virus.  Russia's top epidemiologist has warned that migrating birds may export the deadly virus to Europe and the Middle East.

The strain is the same one that has killed dozens of people in Asia and millions of poultry.

HANOI (Reuters) July 19, 2005 - Vietnam will use over 400 million batches of vaccine to inoculate its chickens and ducks against the deadly bird flu that has killed 40 people in the country, half of them since December 2004. Agriculture Deputy Minister Bui Ba Bong said in a plan that the government would use 415 million doses of Dutch and Chinese vaccines in a program starting in two provinces from August 1.

Other provinces facing high risk of infection would follow between October 1 and November 10, before the arrival of the winter when the deadly virus seems to thrive best. Vietnam has an estimated 210 million poultry.

The Chinese vaccine against the H5N1 virus, which international health officials fear could mutate into a form that might trigger a human pandemic, would be used on ducks.

A Dutch vaccine against the H5N2 virus, a less virulent strain which is not widespread in Vietnam, will be used on chickens. "The vaccine against the H5N2 virus works well against the H5N1 virus as it functions against the H5 subtype," Dau Ngoc Hao, deputy head of the Agriculture Ministry's Animal Health Department has told Reuters.