Bird Flu Tightens Hold on Europe

LJUBLJANA — Bird flu took a firm hold on Europe on Thursday, moving officially into Slovenia, and putting countries in the Middle East and Africa on alert.

While swans were the sentinels, their limp bodies a dramatic testament to the spread of the virus, experts said other birds were almost certainly carrying H5N1 influenza to poultry.

Germany discovered 10 more H5N1 cases, Greece detected an additional two and Austria also reported one more.

"Of course we are worried and we have to get used to the fact that avian flu is now spreading within the European Union," Zsuzsanna Jakab, head of the EU's Stockholm-based European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, told Reuters television.

Hungary was awaiting results from a specialist laboratory in Britain to determine whether the H5 virus detected in three dead wild swans on Wednesday was the H5N1 strain.

"Even with the most rigorous action we cannot assume that we will overcome this matter in a few weeks," German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said in a televised speech.

Iraq declared a bird flu alert in a province south of the capital Baghdad to prevent people from transporting birds in and out of the area, Al Arabiya television reported .

The virus killed an Iraqi teenage girl in January.

H5N1 influenza remains mainly a disease of poultry, and has killed or forced the culling of more than 200 million birds across Asia, parts of the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

But it has also infected 169 people, killing 91, and is steadily mutating. If it acquires the ability to easily pass from person to person, it could cause a pandemic that would kill millions.

Swans as Canaries

Evidence suggests it is carried both by wild birds and in the poultry trade and experts say quick culling is the best way to control an outbreak in birds.

Dr. Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, said while swans were the most obvious victims in Europe, they were not the likely source of the spread.

"Swans are highly susceptible to the virus—they drop dead," said Osterhaus, a chairman of the European scientific working group on influenza.

"Swans fly not more than 50 km (30 miles) a day. But looking at the way the disease has spread—one day it's in Italy, a day later it's in the north of Germany—that makes us believe that there are other bird species spreading the disease."

Poultry markets in Europe and Africa alike were hit hard and a loss of appetite was evident in West Africa, where H5N1 outbreaks in Nigeria are worrying neighboring countries.

"I don't eat chicken any more. ... I also banned my family from eating chicken. I am afraid of what the television is telling us and I do not want to be contaminated," said archivist Leopold Assongba during a shopping trip in Cotonou, Benin, which lies west of Nigeria.

Destroyed Economies

The Lowy Institute for International Policy, an independent Australian think tank, predicted that a pandemic could wipe US$4.4 trillion off global economic output and kill more than 140 million people.

In the United States, chief executive officers of big companies were taking such forecasts seriously.

"If a pandemic hits it's going to be very, very serious for the whole world—not only the deaths that will occur, but the world economy will tank," J.W. Marriott Jr., who heads global lodging group Marriott International Inc., told Reuters.

"People will go and lock themselves in closets. They won't shop, they won't go to movies, they won't get on airplanes, they won't stay in hotels," Marriott said on the sidelines of the Business Roundtable meeting in Boca Raton, Florida.

He said his properties were outfitted with masks, rubber gloves and special detergent to clean surfaces.

Office Depot Inc. Chief Executive Steve Odland said he and other corporate leaders have been briefed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on ways to plan for an outbreak.

Some businesses were ready to take advantage of opportunities. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said it has formed a $200 million fund that will invest in companies making products that could fight an outbreak.

The fund's first investment is in BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an Alabama company whose products include peramivir, an antiviral drug considered a likely new treatment for all forms of influenza.

Additional reporting by Nick Zieminski in Miami, Michael Perry in Sydney, Michael Flaherty in New York, Richard Edgar, Anna Mudeva, Francois Murphy, Robin Pomeroy, Michael Hogan, Abdoulaye Massalatchi and Jan Lopatka