Bird Flu Hits Western Europe

Italy, Greece Report H5N1 Strains In Dead Swans

(AP) 
Hunting wild birds will be banned in both zones, and poultry cannot travel out of the surveillance zone, the Italian Health Ministry said.

Also Saturday, the European Union reference laboratory in Weybridge, England, confirmed that samples from dead swans found within a 45-mile radius from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki had tested positive for the H5N1 strain.

Authorities said health experts in the region were carrying out checks on farms and homes with poultry.

A senior Agriculture Ministry official said there was no immediate need to extend existing precautionary measures in an area near Thessaloniki, which is Greece's second-largest city.

"No new measures are required," Spyros Kyriakis said. "The 10 days within which the sick birds were contagious have passed without any reports of an outbreak among farm poultry. These birds were discovered 11 days ago, so there's no need to panic."

The EU also confirmed that wild swans in the Bulgarian wetland region of Vidin, close to the Romanian border, had tested positive for the H5N1 strain. The Bulgarian Health Ministry tried to calm fears, saying that so far no humans had caught the virus directly from wild birds.

"The incubation period for the disease has passed, and there are no reports of people infected with the bird flu virus," the ministry said.

But in Nigeria, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said authorities were trying to determine whether the H5N1 bird flu strain discovered on a farm in the northern state of Kaduna on Wednesday, the first time it was found in Africa, had spread to humans after several people were reported ill. Authorities have since reported the same virus in two other states.

Investigations were being conducted in the commercial capital, Lagos, and in Kaduna. Lambo gave no details, but said he expected results to be released Sunday.

Elsewhere, China reported its eighth human death from the H5N1 strain, and Indonesia reported its 18th death.