Brussels, 12/06/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 9 June, Hungary informed the European Commission of an outbreak of bird flu in a domestic flock of geese in Bács-Kiskun, in the south of the country. The outcome of tests at the reference laboratory at Weybridge in the United Kingdom are awaited to see if this is the highly pathological H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus. Were it to be the case, Hungary would become the fifth EU country, following France, Sweden, Germany and Denmark, to have had an H5N1 outbreak among domestic birds. In total, thirteen Member States have been affected by outbreaks, mainly among wild birds.
All 2,300 geese in the flock have been destroyed, as have all poultry on farms within a one-kilometre radius of the outbreak. Hungary has put in place the necessary measures to combat the spread of the virus: a three-kilometre protection zone and a ten-kilometre surveillance zone around the affected farm. In February, several swans died of the H5N1 virus in the same region of Hungary. The protection measures implemented at the time have since been lifted, but Hungarian authorities have maintained a high level of surveillance in the area and this allowed the swift detection of the outbreak among the domestic geese, said the Commission.