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UPDATE:

Bird flu found in parrot in British quarantine

By Andrew Gray LONDON (Reuters) - A parrot that died in quarantine in Britain had contracted bird flu but officials do not yet know if it was the lethal strain which has sparked alarm in Europe in recent weeks, the Agriculture Ministry said on Friday.

Traces of the highly pathogenic H5 avian flu virus were found in the parrot imported from Suriname, South America, and held with other birds from Taiwan, a ministry statement said.

"We've got a lot of work going on in investigating the background to this very important development," Britain's chief veterinary officer Debby Reynolds said. "The parrot was in quarantine (and) the birds have been culled in quarantine."

The government said it did not yet know if the virus was of the H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 60 people in four Asian countries since breaking out in late 2003 in South Korea.

It has now reached as far west as European Russia, Turkey and Romania, tracking the paths of migratory birds.

H5N1 has triggered widespread concern because it can transfer to humans in some cases, although only if they have had prolonged and close contact with infected birds, and some experts fear it could mutate to transfer between humans.

Reynolds said it should take a "small number of days" to determine whether the parrot had H5N1. It would be the first case of the strain recorded in Britain, although the parrot was not officially inside the country as it was in quarantine.

Hugh Pennington, a leading microbiologist, said bird flu posed no risk to human health in Britain for now and the case should be simple to tackle as the parrot had been in quarantine.

"It should be very, very easy to nip this particular problem in the bud as we have done in the past with bird flu," he said.

"Bird flu comes to Britain every now and then and it's always been controlled ... by a slaughter policy of birds who the infected birds have met and it hasn't spread into the general bird population of the country," he told BBC News 24 television.

The parrot was part of a mixed consignment of 148 birds that arrived on September 16, the ministry said. They were held with another consignment of 216 birds from Taiwan.

An official with Suriname's Ministry for Natural Resources said the government had not issued any permits for export of animals to England this year, adding veterinary specialists checked birds' health before granting such permits.

The bird had been held in a secure quarantine unit and all the birds there were being culled, Britain's ministry said.

The small number of people who had been in contact with the birds were receiving antiviral treatment as a precautionary measure, the statement added.

"It is very difficult for humans to contract avian influenza. However, the necessary actions to protect human health have been taken in this instance," the ministry said.

"The confirmed case does not affect the UK's official disease-free status because the disease has been identified in imported birds during quarantine," Reynolds said.

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