Without wanting to sound lurid, with this news plus the dow up, "you know who" may be worth a trade tomorrow.
Bird flu spreads deeper into Europe By Rusmir Smajilhodzic in Zagreb October 26, 2005
THE deadly Asian strain of bird flu has spread to Croatia for the first time, a veterinary official said Wednesday, deepening worldwide concern as China fought back against a third outbreak of the virus in a week.
Dead swans found last week in Croatia's rural northeast were carrying the H5N1 strain that has killed at least 62 people in Asia in the past two years, a veterinary official said.
The results of tests carried out by a British laboratory were "what we were expecting", veterinary official Vladimir Savic told a news conference.
"It is the highly pathogenic H5N1."
A second set of dead swans had been found near to those infected with the virus, but were not being tested as it was thought they came from the same flock, Mr Savic added.
Europe is on maximum alert for the further spread of the H5N1 strain, which has already also been detected in Romania, Russia and Turkey, a westward sweep health experts believe is caused by birds migrating ahead of the winter.
Asia has borne the brunt of the virus, with China rushing through an emergency response on Wednesday after the country's third confirmed outbreak of the virulent strain inside a week.
Chinese officials mobilised roadside sterilisation stations and inspected markets after 545 chickens and ducks fell ill and died from the H5N1 strain in the central province of Hunan, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a report filed to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).
According to the OIE website, precautionary measures had been taken, including vaccinations and the disinfection of infected areas, and the state Xinhua news agency said the outbreak was effectively controlled.
Croatian officials said they too had been able to stem the spread of the virus.
"All the measures which we already adopted were justified," Mr Savic said, referring to a precautionary mass slaughter of thousands of chickens and other poultry in the affected areas.
"It is because we had preliminary results within 48 hours (of the discovery of the dead swans) that we were able to prevent the spread of the disease," he said.
Nearly all the humans who have thus far died from the H5N1 virus - two thirds of whom were in Vietnam - had been in close recent contact with infected poultry.
The feared scenario for global health experts would come if the virus mutated with a form of human flu to create a virulent, infectious human strain, potentially sparking a pandemic which could kill millions worldwide.
Countries around the world have rushed through measures in recent weeks to try to abate the spread of the virus in birds.
On Tuesday, the European Union agreed to impose a ban on pet bird imports from the rest of the world, following the detection of the H5N1 strain in a dead parrot held in quarantine in Britain.
British officials said the case - the first confirmed infection within a European Union country - most likely came via other quarantined birds from Taiwan, something Taiwanese officials rejected Wednesday as "unlikely".
Fears migrating birds could have spread the virus to western Europe, sparked by the discovery of dead geese at a lake in Germany, receded Wednesday as initial tests showed the birds most likely ate rat poison.
But with newspapers around the continent running a spate of sometimes lurid stories about the possible impact of a flu pandemic, many shoppers have begun shunning poultry and eggs, prompting concern from producers and vendors.
"I have not sold a single egg since Saturday," lamented a stallholder at Zagreb's popular Dolac outdoor market.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, responded to the fears Wednesday by assuring consumers that they faced no risk from eating poultry or eggs.
"We don't have avian influenza in commercial poultry in the European Union and we consider that poultry meat and eggs, especially when properly cooked, pose no risk to human health," said commission spokesman Philip Tod
