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Romania
detects bird flu case outside Danube delta |
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BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania has detected a new case of bird flu in a remote village outside the Danube delta where the deadly H5N1 strain was discovered in October, officials said on Saturday. A turkey tested positive for the H5 type of avian flu in the small village of Scarlatesti in the Braila county, some 70 miles (113 km) from the delta, Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur told private television station Realitatea TV. The village has been quarantined and samples sent to Britain to ascertain if it is the deadly H5N1 strain. He said quarantine was imposed on the village and culling domestic fowl should start soon as a precautionary move. "We imposed quarantine in the |
village," Flutur said. "The flu was probably brought by migratory birds." Flutur said the village, which has 50 houses, is isolated in an area of lakes, three kilometres from the next village. The Balkan state last month became the first country in mainland Europe to detect the deadly H5N1 virus in poultry in two villages in the Danube delta, Europe's largest wetlands near the Black Sea. The Danube delta is a major resting place for migratory wild birds -- the carriers of the virus. Samples from the turkey will be sent to a laboratory in Weybridge, near London, to determine whether it is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, the country's chief veterinarian Ion Agafitei told Reuters by phone. |
Agafitei did not say when the results would be known. "We'll send the samples to Britain as we have done so far in other suspect cases," Agafitei said. "A vaccination campaign for the villagers would start soon and we will also start culling around 17,000 domestic birds there." The H5N1 strain has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003 and led to the slaughter of millions of domestic birds. Scientists fear the virus might mutate into a form that could be easily transmitted between humans. Romania has not reported any cases of bird flu in humans so far. |
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