Bulgaria has discovered its first case of H5 bird flu in a swan found in the waters of the Danube river, authorities confirmed today.
Sandwiched between Romania and Turkey, both of which have been hit by outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain, Bulgaria has been seen as a possible destination for the virus.
"Our teams found a wild swan in the Danube river near the town of Vidin. The tests on the swan showed it was infected with the H5 virus," Agriculture Minister Nihat Kabil told a news conference.
He said he had put his veterinary offices on high alert but the discovery of one infected swan did not mean there was a danger of wider outbreaks.
"This was a single bird," he said. "There is no sign of any strange behaviour or massive deaths by wild birds."
The swan was found alive on January 31 at an industrial site near the border with Romania and Serbia. It died after showing symptoms of shaking and partial paralysis.
Bulgaria is not able to conduct the complex tests which can tell whether a strain of H5 is the highly pathogenic H5N1, which has killed at least 86 people and millions of birds since 2003.
Human victims contract the virus through close contact with infected birds. However, experts fear the virus will mutate into a form that passes easily from person to person, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die.
"If we send the samples on Monday or Tuesday to the EU-registered laboratory in England, we will have the results in a week," Kabil said.
Scientists believe migratory birds first brought the virus to the region from Russia as they travelled south along the Pontic migratory route, which stretches from Siberia and northern Europe south along the Black Sea's western coast.
In Turkey, four children died of H5N1 last month and authorities have culled 1.3 million birds in domestic flocks to halt its spread.
Romania, home to Europe's largest wetlands in the Danube delta, has detected cases in birds in 26 villages, while to the north Ukraine officials have destroyed hundreds of thousands of domestic birds after numerous outbreaks there. Croatia has also found H5N1 in wild swans.
Germany, which has not detected any cases, issued an order on Friday for poultry to be kept indoors as of March 1 for at least two months to avoid contact with migrating birds that may be heading north from infected areas.
Bulgaria, a relatively poor Black Sea country of 7.8 million, has banned poultry from its neighbours, forbidden the hunting of wild birds, told farmers to keep domestic fowl indoors and has stepped up surveillance of migratory birds in wetland areas.