Bird
flu hits Slovenia, where in EU next Virus found in wild swans in five European countries By Reuters
LJUBLJANA - Slovenia became the latest European Union country to detect H5N1
bird flu and others awaited results on Thursday as an
EU medical expert said the virus was likely to spread
further. The virus was first confirmed in the European
Union on Saturday, when Greece and Italy said they had
found it in wild swans. Austria and Germany followed
on Tuesday.
“Of course we are worried and we have to get
used to the fact that avian flu is now spreading within
the European Union,” Zsuzsanna Jakab, head of
the EU’s Stockholm-based European Center for Disease
Prevention and Control (ECDC), told Reuters television.
“And I’m sure it will also spread to other
countries beyond these five.”
Hungary was awaiting results from a specialist laboratory
in Britain to determine whether the H5 virus detected
in three dead wild swans on Wednesday was in fact the
H5N1 strain of H5. If confirmed, it would be the country’s
first case.
Two
swans dive in the Drava river in Maribor, Slovenia.
Slovenia became the fifth EU country hit by
bird flu this week.
Other so far uninfected countries such as Sweden, Slovakia
and the Czech Republic carried out tests but all results were
negative.
Slovenia was testing for H5N1 in another three dead swans
in which H5 had been found, while Austria reported a new H5N1
case and Germany said it also expected to discover more.
“Even with the most rigorous action we cannot assume
that we will overcome this matter in a few weeks,” German
Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said in a televised speech.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said the German government had spent
months preparing for an outbreak and was in a position to
do everything necessary to combat it.
“There’s no reason for a panic reaction but I
would advise people to be careful,” Merkel told ZDF
television.
Loss of appetite
Europe’s poultry industry has been hit hard by the arrival
of the virus in the European Union. Poultry farmers in Italy,
where chicken meat demand is said to have fallen 70 percent
since Saturday, called on the government for tax breaks to
help them survive the crisis.
The growing loss of appetite for poultry was evident in West
Africa, where H5N1 outbreaks in Nigeria -- the first in Africa
-- are worrying neighboring countries.
“I don’t eat chicken any more ... I also banned
my family from eating chicken. I am afraid of what the television
is telling us and I do not want to be contaminated,”
said archivist Leopold Assongba during a shopping trip in
Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin, which lies west of
Nigeria.
The virus, which has killed at least 91 people in Asia and
the Middle East, has in the European Union been found only
in wild birds so far. Transmission to domestic poultry could
be devastating for the industry and human cases would spark
alarm.
At present humans can contract bird flu only through close
contact with infected birds, which is less likely to happen
in Europe than in countries like Nigeria where poultry are
everywhere and often roam freely among people, experts say.
They fear H5N1 may mutate into a form that can be transmitted
between people and cause a pandemic that could kill millions.
Slovenia said it would test people who had handled the dead
swans only if they showed signs of illness, and so far none
of the 30 people who had been in contact with them had.
Scientists explained why the majority of European Union cases
had been found in swans, saying they were in fact not the
species most guilty of spreading the virus around the continent.
“Swans are highly susceptible to the virus -- they
drop dead. There are other birds which get infected but they
do not become sick and they can spread the disease,”
said Dr. Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at Erasmus Medical
Center in the Netherlands. He did not specify which species
were the culprits.
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