MORE than 1,000 ducks and chickens in Prey Veng province’s Kampong Leav district are believed to have died after contracting the A(H5N1) virus, known as bird flu, and a further 1,500 will soon be tested for the disease, a health official said Thursday, just over a week after a man from the same district became the eighth person to die of the disease since it was first detected in Cambodia in 2004.

Chhun Dy, the district’s chief of animal health, said officials would await test results from the 1,500 animals before deciding whether to begin culling.

Kao Phal, director of the Animal Health Department at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, said the animals would be culled if the tests came back positive.

“We are collecting the sample of [birds] for testing,” Kao Phal said. “They will bring the sample for testing in Phnom Penh.”

Sok Touch, director of the Health Ministry’s Communicable Diseases Control Department, said officials had warned villagers to stay away from the area where the infected poultry died. Kao Phal said that area had been “cleaned”.

Sok Touch noted that no more human cases had been reported.

“There is no further confirmation of people infected with the disease,” he said. “We continue to directly follow the situation in the area.”