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Bird flu found in Britain, Croatia as virus spreads

Afp, London
The global battle against outbreaks of bird flu was expanding yesterday after officials confirmed cases of the virus in a parrot in British quarantine and among swans at a Croatian lake.
A parrot that died in quarantine in Britain tested positive for the H5 strain of the bird flu virus. The bird imported from South America arrived in Britain last month and had been held with a consignment of birds from Taiwan, officials at the British agriculture ministry said.
Chief Veterinary Officer Debby Reynolds did not want to speculate whether the bird could have had the lethal H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003. That strain has recently spread into Turkey and Romania, which also
reported a new suspected case on Friday.
"I don't intend to speculate on the N-type until I have formal, official confirmation of this," Reynolds told a press conference.
Croatia also said further tests were needed to determine if the virus detected in the dead swans was the H5N1 strain, feared to be the precursor of a human pandemic that could kill millions.
The discovery of the six dead swans prompted the European Union authorities in Brussels to announce they were preparing to ban imports of live poultry and poultry products from the Balkan country.
The six dead swans were found in the lake at Zdenci in the east of Croatia, which is one of 20 sites Croatian veteri-nary services have put under heightened surveillance as part of a huge operation to take samples from wild birds.
In France, the French agency for food safety AFSSA recommended early on Saturday stepped up scrutiny of wildlife, but stopped short of proposing poultry be confined.
The United Nations' bird flu envoy flew into China Friday where more than 91,000 birds have been destroyed to stamp out a new outbreak.
"The international community needs to cooperate fully to protect the health of the world's people," Chinese Health Minister Gao Qiang told UN envoy David Nabarro.
In Thailand, doctors reported the seven-year-old son of a Thai farmer who died of bird flu had also contracted the disease, but they said the virus had not mutated and still cannot pass easily among humans.
The 48-year-old farmer -- the 61st human victim of the virus worldwide since late 2003 -- died after slaughtering and eating a sick chicken.
"In this case the boy may have contracted the disease from the area where the chicken was dying. The boy had close contact with the virus (from being around sick chickens) and possibly from handling the birds' excrement," Siriraj Hospital director Prasit Watanapa said.
Doctors said the boy was expected to recover but would remain in hospital for observation for three weeks.
In Romania, officials said a suspected new case of bird flu had been detected in the northeast of the country, only hours after assurances that the outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus had been contained to two locations in the southeast.
Even as governments tried to calm people, fear spread.
Stocks of flu vaccines in Spanish chemists "are being exhausted", the Spanish general public health administration said.
In France, a national federation of supermarket chains said sales of poultry had dropped 20 percent in five days.
The World Health Organisation (WTO) warned against "scaremongering" but it also said each additional human case was making it easier to develop human-to-human transmission.
"While neither the timing nor the severity of the next pandemic can be predicted, the probability that a pandemic will occur has increased," it said.
The European Commission has formally banned imports of pet birds and feathers from nearly all Russian territory in an emergency procedure after the discovery of the disease south of Moscow this week.
The Czech Ministry of Agriculture announced a ban on the sale of chickens in markets and exhibitions or sale of other birds in public places.
Norway ordered all poultry in the south of the country to be placed indoors to prevent contact with wild birds. Switzerland issued a similar order for the entire country.
Ukraine's parliament slapped a sixmonth ban on imports of poultry. Nepal banned imports of European poultry. Bangladesh formed a bird flu taskforce.
Migratory birds believed to be carriers may next take the virus to Africa, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said this week, warning that the continent would be an "ideal breeding ground" because of close contact between people and animals.
Scientists have said east African Rift Valley countries Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, as well as Uganda, were particularly threatened as they host millions of migratory fowl that fly to warmer climes during the European winter.
On the other side of the continent, Senegal -- which has west Africa's largest bird sanctuaries -- asked people to take any poultry found dead to the nearest vet for inspection.