Europe - Lab confirms bird flu in Romanian capital

Bucharest - Laboratory tests confirmed the presence of birds infected with avian flu in the Romanian capital for the first time since it was detected in poultry in the Danube delta last October, officials said on Sunday. Romania has reported more than 20 bird flu outbreaks over the past week, mostly in the central county of Brasov, just a month after the strain was said to have been eradicated in the Black Sea state. Gabriel Predoi, a top official at the Animal Health Agency, said a bird flu strain was found in samples taken from dead chickens on the outskirts of Bucharest. "The H5 virus was confirmed in samples from Bucharest's Sector 2," Predoi told Reuters. "We will quarantine the area and start culling all domestic birds." Predoi said the samples would be sent to a reference laboratory in Weybridge, Britain, to determine, whether they contained the H5N1 strain, deadly to humans. Results for other suspect cases in another area were not yet available, he said. Disinfection points were set up in both sectors on Friday, when suspicious poultry deaths occurred. Around 4 400 domestic birds will be killed in Sector 2, officials said. Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur told reporters on Sunday it was not clear yet what caused the recent wave of avian flu, adding that authorities were considering whether to ban breeding of domestic fowl in large cities. "I do not think we have to panic. We will discuss new outbreaks with experts from the World Health Organisation, who will come to Romania," Flutur told Realitatea TV station. Authorities have said about one million domestic birds might be culled to prevent the spread of avian flu to highly populated areas after H5N1 was detected at a chicken farm 170km north of Bucharest. The European Union candidate has culled nearly half a million fowl since discovering the first bird flu case in the Danube delta, Europe's largest wetlands, last October. It has not reported any cases in humans.