Vogelgriep geconstateerd in Hongarije (en)

Bird flu has reappeared in the EU as the European Commission confirmed on Wednesday (24 January) that dead geese in Hungary were contaminated with the highly virulent H5 strain.

"The European Commission has been informed by the Hungarian authorities today of an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Csongrad County, south-east Hungary," it said in a statement.

Further tests will be carried out in the EU reference laboratory in Weybridge, near London, to confirm that the virus isolated in Hungary belongs to the N1 strain, the EU executive added. The Hungarian reference laboratory will send the samples to the UK Thursday.

The H5N1 strain concerns how infectious the virus is to poultry. Normally a highly pathogenic avian virus is not highly pathogenic to either humans or wild birds. However, this current deadly strain of H5N1 is unusual in being deadly to so many species. A cat was reported to have died from the H5N1 virus in Germany last year.

Tests were carried out for bird flu after an abnormally high number of a flock of over 3,000 geese had died. All of the remaining flock were culled, the commission said.

A spokesperson for the Commission said Brussels was "very satisfied" with Hungary's response and there was "no immediate threat" to Hungarian poultry or poultry exports, writes Independent Online.

"A protection zone of 3km and a surveillance zone of 10km is in place," he said.

It is the first case of the highly pathogenic avian influenza in the EU since August 2006, when one case occurred in a zoo in Dresden in eastern Germany.

The case will be reviewed at an EU expert meeting on Friday.

From 2003 to 2006, the lethal H5N1 virus has so far been found in fifteen EU member states: Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK plus Bulgaria and Romania which entered the EU last January.

In that period, the H5N1 strain has killed more than 150 people worldwide who have been in close contact with infected birds, mainly in Asia, according to the World Health Organisation. The EU hasn't reported any human cases.

Experts fear the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus could mutate into a human virus and trigger a global pandemic, like the Spanish flu in 1918 which killed millions of people.