Italy: Italian health authorities over the weekend confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in at least 21 migratory swans in the southern regions of Calabria, Puglia and Sicily.
The announcement came as authorities in Bulgaria and Greece also confirmed similar discoveries amongst sick migratory swans near to Thessaloniki, Greece and in the Bulgarian wetland region of Vidin.
Meanwhile, Nigeria was testing what could be the first humans to be infected with the deadly virus in Africa.
Although the virus has already infected at least 166 people and killed 88, mostly in Asia, Italian health authorities reassured public opinion, claiming that the virus poses no immediate risk to humans since, so far, it has affected only wild birds.
Despite those reassurances, the latest confirmations raise concern about the spread of the disease and the possibility that it might mutate into a form more easily transmissible among humans, who usually catch the disease from domestic poultry.
"It's a relatively safe situation for human health, less so for animal health," said Health Minister Francesco Storace.
The health ministry's reading of the situation was confirmed by the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Senior animal health officer Juan Lubroth said: "The risk to humans is less if the disease is in wildlife than if it is in poultry."
Last week, the UN organisation had warned that bird flu could well have arrived in countries neighbouring Turkey, which has had outbreaks in 26 of its 81 provinces.
The infected birds found in Bulgaria, Greece and southern Italy are believed to have flown south from the Balkans, driven out of their regular winter habitats by the unusually cold weather in many parts of eastern Europe.
Italian authorities have cordoned off a 10-kilometre surveillance and protection zone around the areas where the infected birds were found. Transport of poultry out of these areas and hunting of wild birds has been banned.
Italian newspapers yesterday carried extensive features on bird flu reassuring readers that the H5N1 virus could not be contracted through eating infected meat and reminding consumers to look for Ministry of Health guarantee labels, now compulsory on all Italian poultry products.
Meanwhile, the virus claimed two more lives in Indonesia, raising to 18 the number of deaths in the country from bird flu, a health official said yesterday.
And further suspected outbreaks in birds were reported, with EU member Slovenia saying it had sent samples of avian influenza H5 found in a swan to Britain for further tests to see if it was of the highly pathogenic variety.
Nigeria last week became the first African country to confirm an H5N1 outbreak. As in most of Sub Saharan Africa, poultry are everywhere there - in backyards, on city streets, on buses and in crowded markets.
Nigerian health officials were waiting anxiously for test results on two children feared to be the first Africans to be infected with the virus. France and Germany are to send veterinary experts to Nigeria to help teams there contain the bird flu virus, the French Agriculture Ministry said. The bird flu virus has been confirmed at a total of five farms in Nigeria's Kaduna, Kano and Plateau states, killing at least 100,000 birds.
- (Additional reporting: Reuters, PA)