Three water-birds found dead in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg were infected with a strain of bird flu that can be lethal to humans, health officials said Sunday. Local authorities established a four-kilometres exclusion zone around two lakes where eight wild swans, geese and ducks died in the past six days, dpa reported. Veterinary experts at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute on the island of Riems in the north of Germany determined that two swans and a wild duck had contracted the H5N1 bird-flu strain. Tests on the other five animals were continuing. "I expect that these are infected, as well," said Karin Koester, spokeswoman for the office of veterinary medicine in Bavaria. In the meantime, officials ordered that all poultry farmers in the exclusion zone keep their animals indoors. Pet owners were warned not to let their dogs or cats roam free in the affected area. Nuremberg is located 120 kilometres from the border with the Czech Republic, where an outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm was confirmed on Thursday. The disease was discovered after nearly one-third of the 6,000 turkeys perished at the farm in the village of Tisova in the country's east. The rest of the flock was culled. The last outbreak of bird flu in Bavaria occurred in April 2006. Pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe have been contributing to a global stockpile of vaccine for the H5N1 strain. Some 190 people around the world have died of bird flu since 2003, mainly through coming into close contact with infected poultry, according to the World Health Organization. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, which could touch off a global pandemic that would kill millions.
