German chicken tests positive for H5N1 flu strain

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A police spokesman in Neuruppin, north of Berlin, confirmed that a chicken on a small farm in the town of Blumenthal in the Ostprignitz-Ruppin district had tested positive for the virus.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A third case of a chicken testing positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in the northeast German state of Brandenburg was confirmed by state authorities on Wednesday.

A police spokesman in Neuruppin, north of Berlin, confirmed that a chicken on a small farm in the town of Blumenthal in the Ostprignitz-Ruppin district had tested positive for the virus.

All 31 birds in the village were culled. It was the third case in 10 days in Brandenburg, a rural state that surrounds Berlin and is on the border with Poland. There have been eight cases of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Poland this month.

Officials in Brandenburg sealed off a protection zone with a radius of three km (two miles) and imposed a surveillance zone of 10 km radius around the area. There are 150,000 birds in the 10-km zone.

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Earlier this month, two chickens in the Oberhavel district further west tested positive for H5N1. Eleven birds in a small Oberhavel farm were suspected of having the virus, of which five died and two were sent for tests which proved positive, the state Agriculture Ministry said.

A week ago, a separate case of bird flu was confirmed in the town of Bensdorf in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district, bringing the number of bird flu cases in the state to 24.

German authorities culled tens of thousands of birds after the virus was found at two farms in Bavaria early this year.

Although experts fear the H5N1 strain could spark a global pandemic and kill millions of people if it mutates, it has infected relatively few humans in its present form.

Since 2003, nearly 350 people worldwide are known to have contracted the H5N1 virus, of whom more than 200 have died.

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum, editing by Tim Pearce)