Six Months Until Bird Flu Hits U.S.?

U.N. Bird Flu Chief Speculates On Spread Due To Migratory Patterns

(CBS/AP)  The virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu could reach the Americas in six to 12 months or even sooner as infected wild birds migrate toward the Arctic and Alaska, the U.N. bird flu chief said.

Migratory patterns will probably take birds carrying the virus from West Africa to the Arctic and Alaska this spring, Dr. David Nabarro said Wednesday. Some infected birds will then likely move south in the fall on a migratory route to the Americas.

"I think it's within the next six to 12 months," Nabarro told a news conference, "And who knows — we've been wrong on other things, it may be earlier."

Meanwhile, a German lab says bird flu has spread to another animal species there.

The lab found the virus in a weasel-like mammal called a stone marten.

The marten was found on a northern German island where an infected cat was found last month. Infected cats have since been found in Austria. Cats are believed to have caught the virus by eating infected birds. A German official notes that martens and cats eat comparable foods.

The H5N1 strain has spread rapidly through Asia and Europe and recently reached Africa, devastating poultry stocks. Virtually all people who have gotten bird flu have had close contact with infected poultry.

In other developments:

A wild swan that died in northwestern Serbia tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the first confirmed case for the Balkan nation, the Agriculture Ministry said Thursday. Samples from the bird — found on Feb. 28 near the border with Croatia — were sent to the EU reference laboratory in Weybridge, England, which determined that it was infected with the lethal strain, a ministry statement said. Cases of the H5N1 strain have already been recorded in poultry and birds in neighboring Romania, Croatia, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Hungary.

Authorities in southern Ho Chi Minh City may reimpose a ban on hatching and restocking chickens to prevent bird flu outbreaks, despite a government decision lifting the ban across Vietnam last month, officials said Thursday. Huynh Huu Loi, director of the city's department of animal health, said the risk of bird flu flare-ups in the country's largest city — with more than 6 million residents — remains high, and losses caused by the disease would be much bigger than the economic benefit brought by the industry.

African governments need to put aside billions of dollars to compensate farmers whose chickens they slaughter to control the spread of bird flu, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday. Without instant compensation payments, attempts to stop further outbreaks of the H5N1 virus could fail because farmers would be reluctant to kill their poultry stocks, said WHO Director General Dr. Lee Jong-wook. He said African governments should be the first to pay, but the international community will need to make up any shortfall.

The infected animal found in Germany, apparently sick and dying, was found near the Wittow Ferry area of the island, where cats and birds have been found with the disease. It was then killed by a government veterinarian, the institute said in a statement. The discovery last month that the virus had passed from wild birds to cats on Ruegen raised concerns about the disease's ability to spread. Infected cats have also been found in Austria. "The presence of an H5N1 infection in a second mammalian species is not surprising," Till Backhaus, the regional minister for agriculture, said in a statement. "Cats and martens have a comparable prey spectrum."

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©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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