TOKYO/BEIJING: Japan began killing some 90,000 chickens on Tuesday to contain another outbreak of a highly contagious strain of avian flu, officials said.

The new drive means more than a million farm birds will have been killed in seven mass culls this season as officials work to prevent the spread of the virulent H5 strain, which has been detected at several farms across the country.

Kumamoto prefecture in southwestern Japan started slaughtering some 93,000 farm birds Tuesday after confirming the H5 strain was found in the town of Nankan, officials said.

“The cull is expected to be completed within 24 hours,” a prefectural official told AFP, adding nearly 400 officials had been dispatched to handle the operation.

Japan’s first outbreak of avian flu this winter hit in November, which led to the killing of some 18,000 ducks in northern Aomori prefecture.

Several more outbreaks have since hit throughout Japan, from the northern main island of Hokkaido to Kyushu in the southwest.

When Tuesday’s cull is complete, the total number of birds slaughtered due to the disease this winter will stand at some 1.07 million, the farm ministry said.

China culls 55,000 birds

China’s Xinjiang region has culled more than 55,000 chickens and other poultry following an outbreak of bird flu that has infected 16,000 birds, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Tuesday.

The H5N6 strain of the virus was confirmed in Yining, a city of 500,000 people, and has killed 10,716 birds, the ministry said.

It is the fourth flu outbreak among poultry since October and brings the total cull since then to more than 170,000 birds.

South Korea is currently trying to contain the H5N6 strain, which has caused 10 human deaths in China since April 2014.

At least seven people in China have been infected this winter with the H7N9 bird flu strain and two have died. To bolster their defense against infection, Chinese poultry farmers have scrambled to give their chickens more vitamins and vaccines in recent weeks.

Beijing has banned poultry imports from more than 60 countries and said any countries with highly pathogenic cases will automatically go onto that list. Regional authorities in three provinces have curbed live poultry trading in some cities to prevent the spread of the disease.

The last major bird flu outbreak in China in 2013 killed 36 people and caused more than $6 billion in losses for the agriculture sector.

In a statement on its website on Sunday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the issue warrants greater attention this year, because the disease is developing earlier than in previous years, and cases are increasing more quickly in some districts.

Delegations from Japan, South Korea and China gathered in Beijing earlier this month for a symposium on preventing and controlling bird flu and other diseases in East Asia, the Agriculture ministry’s website showed.