German tests confirm bird flu virus in swans

http://iht.com/articles/2006/02/16/news/flu.php

German tests confirm bird flu virus in swans
The New York Times, The Associated Press
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2006

BERLIN Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said Thursday that tests had confirmed that two swans found dead in northern Germany earlier this week carried the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Citing results of tests carried out by Germany's Friedrich Loeffler Institute, Seehofer said the virus was "a sub-strain like that which was first registered in wild birds in China last year."

Danish officials said Thursday that 35 dead birds found in Denmark would also be tested for the H5N1 virus.

"We have received 32 dead swans, a duck, a seagull and a cormorant," said Mogens Madsen, head of the Danish Institute for Food and Veterinary Research's testing lab. "They all will be tested and we expect the results to be ready Friday."

In Denmark, all but one of the dead fowl were found on islands in the southeastern part of the country. The cormorant was found in the Vejle fjord in western Denmark and was being tested as a precaution, said Madsen.

Health officials across Europe issued restrictions for commercial poultry farms Wednesday after reports that the deadly bird flu virus had turned up earlier than expected in migratory birds in several European countries.

The virus was confirmed in mute swans in Greece, Bulgaria and Italy on Saturday, and in Germany on Wednesday. Likely cases were detected in the same species in Slovenia and Croatia on Sunday, Austria on Monday and Denmark on Tuesday.

Health officials had expected wild birds to carry the disease into Europe from Africa in the spring migration. But the swans were probably migrating south to wintering grounds on the Black Sea, officials said, and were driven west by unusually cold weather in Russia and Ukraine.

Although 91 people have died after picking up the virus from close contact with birds, the most immediate threat for Europe is an uncontrolled outbreak of the virus among domesticated fowl, which can rapidly decimate a national poultry industry.

This strain of flu virus, H5N1, is highly contagious and lethal to birds, often killing tens of thousands of poultry at a time. All of the birds in a wide region must be culled to prevent the spread of the disease.

To avoid contamination of domestic animals, many countries across Europe, including Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, ordered poultry farmers to keep their flocks indoors. In Germany and Hungary, health officials set up 3-kilometer, or 2-mile, protection zones around the spots where dead swans had been found, with all poultry required to be kept indoors and the shipping of meat outside the zones forbidden.

"For the most part, this is an animal disease," Dick Thomson of the World Health Organization told the German radio service Deutsche Welle. "It is deadly to chickens and other birds, but this virus has been shown to leap to humans."

"We have absolutely no control over the introduction of the virus by migratory birds that are about to start returning from Africa to Siberia, Scandinavia and Greenland," Jean Ahars, a French specialist, said Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse.