Finland plans to start offering preventive avian flu vaccinations to people in contact with animals as early as next week, the country's health authorities announced.

Finland will offer the vaccine to individuals who are at risk of infection due to their work or other circumstances, according to Reuters, citing the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.

The vaccine received marketing authorization in the European Union in April of this year and was developed to curb the spread of the H5 subtype of the avian flu virus. Finland has procured vaccine doses for 10,000 people through the European Union. The H5N1 strain of avian flu has been associated with severe illnesses and fatalities in humans, although no confirmed cases have been reported in Finland.

H5N1 has killed or led to the culling of hundreds of millions of birds worldwide in recent years. The strain has increasingly spread to mammals, including cows in the United States and, in some cases, to humans.

Finland aims to implement vaccinations due to the risk of spread from a large number of fur farms.

"The situation in Finland is quite different in that we have fur farms where animals can come into contact with wildlife," said Hanna Nohynek, chief physician at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, to Reuters. Widespread avian flu outbreaks among minks and foxes on Finnish fur farms last year resulted in the culling of approximately 485,000 animals to prevent the virus from spreading among animals and to humans.