Slovenia's government on Thursday confirmed its first bird flu case in the north of the country. Germany also confirmed two dead swans had been affected with the fatal H5N1 virus. The European Union approved new measures to tighten control of the spread of the deadly disease .

EU MEASURES

According to the EU regulations, if H5N1 virus is suspected or confirmed in any EU country, the authorities must immediately set up an inner protection zone, surrounded by a surveillance zone and an extra buffer zone.

The sizes of the protection and surveillance zones are the same for both wild birds and domestic poultry -- 3 km for the inner zone and 10 km for the surveillance zone -- while the buffer zone's size depends on the area's topography.

Within the inner zone, domestic poultry must be slaughtered if the H5N1 strain is suspected or confirmed. In the surveillance zone, poultry must be confined unless traveling to a slaughterhouse, officials said.

The buffer zone is a new measure.

"We are taking the additional precaution of defining high-risk areas to act as a buffer zone between infected areas and unaffected parts of a member state," Philip Tod, European Commission food safety spokesman, told a press briefing in Brussels on Thursday.

"The establishment of these risk areas will help to define a disease-free part of the country, which is obviously good for trade purposes," he said.

On Wednesday, the EU agreed to pay half the costs of national bird flu surveillance programmes, which aim to ensure early detection of any outbreak of the disease in the EU-25, up to a ceiling of 1.96 million euros (2.32 million US dollars).

Countries where the highly pathogenic strain has been detected, or strongly suspected, have in recent weeks set up protection and surveillance zones as a precaution.

In wild birds, all poultry and captive animals must be kept indoors in the event of an outbreak, within both the protection and surveillance zones, with movement within and from the zones restricted. Hunting of wild birds should be banned.

Brussels earlier this week adopted a global ban on imports of untreated feathers, and the new measures passed on Thursday are expected to be put into action in the next few days.

The whole European continent is now in a high state of nervousness, and every country is rushing to make preparations to prevent the spread or outbreak of the disease.

"Everybody is on high alert," one EU expert said on condition of anonymity. "We are working on the assumption that there is a high risk of infection in many areas of Europe."

BIRD FLU SPREADS

In Europe, the presence of H5N1 virus has so far been verified in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Ukraine and the European part of Russia. Almost all the cases involve migratory wild swans.

On Thursday, Slovenia reported its first bird flu case near the Austrian border. Germany's leading animal health institute also verified two dead swans found on Tuesday were infected with the deadly virus. Another new case was also confirmed in Romania, bringing the affected number to 31 in the country.

"Of course we are worried and we have to get used to the fact that avian flu is now spreading within the European Union," said Zsuzsanna Jakab, head of the EU's Stockholm-based European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Until now, all the cases in Europe were found on migratory birds, which means the deadly virus has not, or has not been found, to affect poultry and people on the European continent, yet the clock is ticking.

EU officials say the real fear now stems from the expected spring migration from Africa, where Nigeria is having its first bird flu outbreak in the African continent.

H5N1 influenza remains mainly a disease of poultry, and has killed or forced the culling of more than 200 million birds across Asia, parts of the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

But it has also infected 169 people, killing 91, and is steadily mutating. If it acquires the ability to easily pass from person to person, it could cause a pandemic that would kill millions.

POULTRY INDUSTRY CRISIS

Europe's poultry industry has been hit badly by the arrival of the virus in the European Union. Poultry farmers in Italy complained that chicken meat demand has fallen 70 percent since Saturday when bird flu first hit Europe. They called on the government to abolish tax to help them survive the crisis.

The Lowy Institute for International Policy, an independent Australian think tank, predicted that a pandemic could wipe 4.4 trillion US dollars off global economic output and kill more than 140 million people.

Source: Xinhua