H5N1 confirmed in German cat as pets put on short leash
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-03-03 14:01

German health officials confirmed that a cat on Ruegen island died from bird flu's most pathogenic strain as EU veterinary experts urged pet owners to keep cats indoors and dogs on a leash in affected areas.

Male cat Oskar peers through the bars of his so-called quarantine box in an animal shelter in the southern town of Munich, where his owner brought him in fear of the bird flu disease. German health officials confirmed that a cat on Ruegen island died from bird flu's most pathogenic strain as EU experts urged pet owners to keep cats indoors and dogs on a leash in areas affected by H5N1.(AFP)

The cat found on the Baltic island had been infected with the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu that can prove fatal to humans, the national veterinary laboratory said.

It was the first case of an infected mammal in the European Union, but the disease killed domestic and wild cats, including tigers, in Asia in 2004.

Hundreds of German cat owners have since left their pets at shelters, the German animal welfare society said.

"Nationwide, several hundred cats have been left with us. People are scared their cats have bird flu," a spokesman for the group, Jan Pfeifer, told AFP.

Meanwhile the United States was bracing itself for the arrival of migratory wild birds infected by H5N1.

Dr.Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee of the House of Representatives:

"We need to expect a bird arriving with this pathogene in the US and we are as the government taking the steps to be as prepared as possible.

"We have evidence of domestic poultry outbreaks in more and more countries. It's accelerating and it's high season for avian flu...."

"The current situation right now isn't a good situation," she said.

The government had a strategy in collaboration with its global partners.

"The first element of that strategy...if there is a threat anywhere we have to respond as if it were a threat here," Gerberding said.

A total of 94 people were known by Thursday to have died worldwide from the human form of avian flu, according to the UN World Health Organisation (WHO).

EU veterinary experts in Brussels have advised pet owners to keep cats indoors and dogs on leashes in areas hit by outbreaks of bird flu virus.

"Contacts between domestic carnivores, particularly cats, and wild birds should be prevented," a committee of EU food chain and health experts said Wednesday.

The head of Germany's national veterinary laboratory, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, told reporters that the virus could be passed from one cat to another but it was unknown "which viral load one could catch from a cat".

Meanwhile it was reported from Paris that 11 more wild birds had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu in eastern France, adding to an outbreak in that region that includes a commercial turkey farm.

The outbreaks have led to a sharp drop in domestic consumption and exports of poultry -- a bad blow for France, which is the fourth biggest poultry exporter in the world after the United States, China and Brazil, and the biggest supplier in the 25-nation European Union.

Bahamian authorities played down a spate of bird deaths, as experts Thursday headed back from a southern island after collecting samples to determine whether the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain had reached the Americas.

The agriculture ministry noted that other countries in the region have had similar scares but that it turned out the birds died of other causes.

To date, the Western Hemisphere has had no confirmed case of H5N1 bird flu, which has spread from Asia to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Ethiopian authorities said Thursday they had incinerated all the chickens in a farm where preliminary tests on dead poultry revealed a bird flu-like infection.

Ethiopia, along with other nations in the region such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, are considered at high risk for the spread of the virus as millions of migratory birds flock there during the European winter.

More than 450,000 poultry have died from bird flu or been protectively slaughtered since the discovery of the disease in Nigeria two weeks ago, Information Minister Frank Nweke said Thursday.

"We can confirm today that we have lost over 450,000 birds on account of this outbreak, and these are from about 126 farms across the affected states," he told journalists. Previously the official figure was 300,000.

The WHO on Thursday confirmed that a 39-year-old Iraqi man died in January of the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1.

A woman suspected of being infected with H5N1 has died in the southern Iraqi province of Nasiriyah, a government spokeswoman said.

Serbia on Thursday confirmed its first case of the H5 bird flu virus in a swan found dead in the Balkan country's northwest.