Bird flu arrives in Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Slovenia

BIRD flu has reached western Europe with Slovenia yesterday following Italy, Greece and Bulgaria in announcing they had detected the virus in dead swans.

The Slovenian authorities informed the European Commission of a confirmed case of avian influenza virus H5 in a swan. Slovenia has sent samples for further tests to see if it is of the highly pathogenic variety.

The area where the swan was found is less than 10km from the Austrian border.