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Germany finds three more cases of lethal bird flu
HAMBURG (Reuters) - Germany identified three more cases of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu in swans on Tuesday, bringing the total number of wild birds infected to nine, but authorities said they had not changed their risk assessment.
The Friedrich Loeffler animal disease institute said the three swans were found near Leipzig in the eastern state of Saxony. Nine wild birds -- eight swans and a Canada goose -- had now been confirmed as H5N1 cases, it added.
"The new cases from Saxony do not change anything yet in our risk assessment," Thomas Mettenleiter, president of the institute, said in a statement.
Six birds were confirmed at the weekend as infected with H5N1 after they were found in Nuremberg in south Germany and were examined as part of a national testing program.
Authorities continued to investigate the Nuremberg outbreak, the first in Germany this year, but the Agriculture Ministry believes the incident could be isolated.
"Given the current finds, our experts are not yet able to judge whether there will be a more widespread epidemic of the disease similar to last year," Mettenleiter said.
Further tests comparing the latest finds with viruses in Hungary and the Czech Republic should provide clues as to how the H5N1 strain entered Germany, he added.
Poultry farmers in the Nuremberg region have been ordered to confine all poultry to closed stalls. As of Saturday, a 21-day ban was imposed on bringing poultry or poultry products in or out of the area, which is now a quarantine zone.
Last year, some 13 European Union member states had confirmed cases of bird flu -- Germany, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Greece, Britain, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, France and Hungary.
Bird flu has been spreading across southeast Asia, killing two people in Vietnam this month, the first deaths there since 2005.
Globally, the H5N1 virus has killed nearly 200 people out of over 300 known cases, according to the World Health Organization. None of the victims were from Europe.
(Additional reporting by Iain Rogers in Berlin)
