Bird Flu Spreads in Europe and Russia

Posted on October 20, 2005

The BBC reports that bird flu is continuing to spread in Europe and Russia. No new countries have bird flu infection but in Romania sick birds have been discovered in another village.

Maliuc joins the Danube delta village of Ceamurlia de Jos as the second place in Romania to have confirmed it has the virus.

And in Russia the H5N1 virus has been discovered in Tula.

Preliminary tests suggest bird flu has also arrived in European Russia, west of the Ural mountains, having been found in Asian Siberia already.
Russian laboratories said H5N1 had been detected in birds in Tula, about 220km (137 miles) south of Moscow.

And the UN expects bird flu to spread into Africa and the Middle East via migratory birds. The only good news is that to date the virus has not acquired the ability to transmit easily from person to person.