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Berlin: 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 yesterday.
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 and imposed a surveillance zone of 10 km radius around the area. There are 150,000 birds in the 10-km zone.
Several cases
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 at two farms in Bavaria early this year.
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