India lab says bird flu outbreak is H5N1 strain

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An India government laboratory said on Thursday that the latest outbreak of bird flu in poultry in the remote northeast of the country was of the dangerous H5N1 strain.

But officials said they were waiting for the results from a second laboratory before officially declaring India's first outbreak of the deadly bird flu strain in about a year.

"It is the H5N1 strain," A.C Mishra, director of the National Institute of Virology in the western city of Pune, told reporters.

The latest outbreak was reported in chickens in a small poultry farm in the tiny state of Manipur, which borders Myanmar.

India declared itself bird flu free last August after two major outbreaks of the H5N1 virus in chickens in western India. It culled around a million poultry birds to contain those outbreaks.