April 12, 2006

Dead swan may have originated outside UK

The dead bird in which H5N1 was confirmed on Apr 6 in Scotland has been identified as a Whooper swan by DNA 'fingerprinting' at the Central Science Laboratory, UK's Chief Veterinary Officers announced Tuesday (Apr 11).

The Cellardyke swan is the first highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu case detected in a wild bird in the British Isles and the current hypothesis is that the swan originated outside Great Britain. There are Whooper swan populations which winter across Great Britain.

A number of these have been tested over the past few months, all results so far have been negative. At this time of the year, it's expected that Whooper swans would be leaving for their summer breeding grounds.

More information will become available in the future from the current incident and studies on epidemiological, surveillance and laboratory tests that are now in progress worldwide.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs continues to urge members of the public to report findings of dead birds.

There will be no immediate change to the measures already in place.