Bird Flu Kills Swans in Italy, Greece

Bird flu has reached Western Europe, with Italy and Greece announcing Saturday that they had detected the H5N1 strain of the virus, which can be deadly to humans, in dead swans.

Italian officials said the virus found in five swans in southern Italy had affected only wild birds and posed no immediate risk to people.

Greek authorities said health experts were checking poultry on farms and homes in the region where infected swans were found outside Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city.

The European Union said the flu strain, which has infected at least 166 people and killed 88, mostly in Asia, also had been confirmed in wild swans in the Bulgarian wetland region of Vidin, close to Romania.

No human infections were reported in the three countries, but the outbreak increased concern that the virus could mutate into a form easily transmissible among humans, who generally have been infected through contact with domestic poultry.

Experts said they were reassured by the fact that the virus in Western Europe had been detected in wild birds rather than on farms.

“The risk to humans is less if the disease is in wildlife than if it is in poultry,” said Juan Lubroth, a senior animal health officer at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The EU said Italy and Greece had agreed to create protection and surveillance zones around each outbreak area, where fowl will be isolated, tested for the virus and killed if they are infected.

Also Saturday, authorities in Nigeria said they were investigating whether the virus, discovered there last week, had spread to humans after at least two children were reported ill.