Spain has recorded its first case of H5N1 bird flu, the Agriculture Ministry said Friday.
The strain was found in a wild bird in a marsh area outside the northern city of Vitoria, the ministry said in a statement.
The version of the H5N1 strain found in this case is highly virulent, it added.
A protective area of 2 miles has been declared outside the area where the bird, known as a great crested grebe, was found, the statement added.
Spanish officials said late last year as bird flu spread to several European countries that it was only a matter of time before the disease made it to this country, which is on the route of northern-bound migratory birds from Africa.
Preventive measures taken so far had included banning outdoor poultry farming within a 6.25-mile radius of certain marshlands, where migratory birds tend to gather.
Bird flu has killed at least 131 people worldwide since it started ravaging Asian poultry in late 2003, according to the World Health Organization.
Most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that makes it more easily transmissible among humans.
In other developments:
European Union experts said Friday that an influenza pandemic that could kill millions remains inevitable, although the immediate threat to human health from bird flu in Europe remains low. "It's when and not if," said Robert Madelin, director general of the EU's health and consumer protection department. Madelin cited scientists' predictions suggesting a flu pandemic could kill 2-7 million people worldwide, 10 times the death rate from regular flu. A 3-year-old Indonesian girl died of bird flu near the capital, local tests results showed, in the latest case of the virus to hit the sprawling country, a senior health ministry official said. "Local tests showed she was positively infected with the H5N1" strain of the bird flu virus, Kandun said late Thursday, adding that the girl had reportedly had contact with birds. A World Health Organization investigation showed that the H5N1 virus mutated in an Indonesian family cluster on Sumatra island, but bird flu experts insisted it did not increase the possibility of a human pandemic. The virus that infected eight members of a family last month — killing seven of them — appears to have slightly mutated in a 10-year-old boy, who is suspected of having passed the virus to his father, the WHO investigative report said.