H5N1 bird flu new sites found in Poland

WARSAW (Reuters) - The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in two new sites in Poland on Wednesday, an official said.

In the afternoon a new site was found at a small farm near the city of Elblag, in northern Poland, chief veterinary officer Ewa Lech told Reuters.

"Unfortunately we had detected the bird flu at a sixth site, a small farm with about 40 birds. This is an entirely new location," said Lech.

Lech also confirmed a report earlier on Wednesday that bird flu was also detected in wild birds near the town of Orneta, northeastern Poland.

Emergency services set up a safety perimeter around both of the sites.

Poland has suffered a spate of recent outbreaks. The first was discovered at a turkey farm 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Warsaw earlier this month.

Further sites were detected some 50 km from that location in an area of intensive poultry production.

One of the EU's biggest poultry producers, Poland exported 230,000 tonnes of poultry to European markets last year.

(Reporting by Patryk Wasilewski; editing by Sami Aboudi)