UK testing parrot for bird-flu strain

UK scientists were conducting tests on Saturday to determine whether a parrot infected with avian flu had the lethal strain that has killed more than 60 people around the world.

The Department for Food and Rural Affairs could not immediately say when the results of the tests would be known.

The department announced on Friday that a parrot from the South American country of Suriname had died of the disease while in quarantine. It was Britain's first confirmed case of bird flu since 1992.

The government's chief veterinarian, Debby Reynolds, said the bird had an H5 strain of the virus. But it was not clear whether it had the H5N1 strain which has devastated poultry stocks across Asia and killed 60 people in the past two years, mostly poultry farmers directly infected by birds.

Reynolds said the parrot, which died earlier this week, had arrived in the UK last month as part of a mixed consignment of birds from Suriname being held in a biosecure quarantine unit alongside a consignment of birds from Taiwan.

The department said it was in contact with officials in both Suriname and Taiwan as it sought to determine where the bird had contracted the virus.

Because the bird died in quarantine, the discovery of bird flu does not affect the UK's disease-free status.

The government said the other birds held in the unit had been culled and staff who had come into contact with the birds were given antiviral medication.

Meanwhile, Croatia confirmed the country's first cases of bird flu on Friday with six swans testing positive for the H5 type, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Medical experts detected the H5 type in six swans during testing late on Friday. Twelve swans were found dead by rangers at a pond and fishing farm a day earlier near the Zdenci national park, some 150km east of the capital Zagreb. It was unclear whether the other six swans were also tested.

The Minister of Agriculture Petar Cobankovic said that several kilometers from the scene that "there is no room for panic." A wide swath around where the wild swans had died was immediately placed under quarantine and cordoned off for disinfection.

Cobankovic said that other measures prescribed by the EU were also put in place, such as bans on poultry distribution and closure of free-range bird sites.

Most of the domestic poultry in the sparsely inhabited area will be slaughtered as a precaution to prevent the possible spread of the disease.

Samples from the contaminated birds were sent to a laboratory in Weybridge, England, to confirm whether the birds had the deadly H5N1 strain. The strain has recently been found in birds in Russia, Turkey and Romania.

"The swans were acting strangely, flying in circles," said Zvonko Zagar, a park ranger, who has watched wildlife in the area for about 30 years. "I was afraid the virus would come as I have fowls at home that I will now have to kill."

About 1,500 migratory swans arrived in eastern Croatia a few days ago. Ornithologists said that the flock flew in from the north, most likely from the UK, Ukraine or Russia.

The EU's executive office was preparing a ban on all poultry imports from Croatia.

German animal-health experts warned yesterday that an improved vaccine to protect poultry against bird flu is nowhere near the production stage, despite the westward spread of the H5N1 virus.

The vaccine, under development on the Baltic Sea island of Riems where Germany studies the deadliest animal diseases, solves the main problem with existing vaccines by including a genetic marker to distinguish the vaccine virus from the virus in the wild.

Using existing vaccines, it is almost impossible to map the spread of the disease, since a vaccinated bird and an infected bird give the same test result. Healthy, vaccinated poultry have to be slaughtered and burned too if the H5 virus reaches a farm.

Thomas Mettenleiter, head of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute on Riems, said the prototype vaccine, which has a marking system built into it, had been successfully tested, but faces a long path to approval and manufacture.

The institute is to meet with vaccine makers next week to review whether more research is needed.

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