Italian health minister tours bird flu regions

Italy’s health minister toured parts of southern Italy today where six wild swans infected with the bird flu virus were found.

Officials sought to allay fears by saying people need only follow simple precautions to keep the virus from spreading.

Francesco Storace arrived in Catania, Sicily, and planned to visit the regions of Calabria and Puglia on the Italian mainland where the infected birds were discovered.

The visit came a day after the Health Ministry confirmed that test results had come back positive for the H5N1 virus strain on a swan found in Puglia – the sixth positive result in Italy.

“The important thing is not to touch those animals,” Storace said yesterday.

The cases in Italy and others confirmed in northern Greece on Saturday marked the first time the highly infectious strain of the H5N1 virus had been detected within the European Union.

The Health Ministry repeated yesterday that the outbreak posed no immediate threat to people or domesticated bird flocks because only wild birds had been infected.