A scientist carries out tests in an Italian animal health institute in Palermo . (Reuters)

EUROPEAN CAPITALS, February 11, 2006, (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - In an alarmingly rapid spread of the bird flu virus in Europe, Greece, Italy and Bulgaria reported Saturday, February 11, the first infections of the deadly disease in wild swans, as a UN expert warned that the virus is only two mutations away from a form that can spread easily among people, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die.

"The H5N1 virus has been detected in samples from three wild swans sent to London on Thursday," said a Greek agriculture ministry official, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Results from the EU's testing laboratory in Britain said that swans found dead near Greece 's northern city of Salonika were carrying the H5N1 bird flu virus.

The H5N1 has also been found in wild swans in Bulgaria , the European Commission announced Saturday.

The virus has killed tens of millions of birds since 2003 and there have been at least 165 confirmed cases of the strain spreading to humans, causing about 90 deaths, mainly in Asia .

Scientists fear that the more the virus spreads, the greater the chance H5N1 will mutate into a form that is easily transmissible between humans.

This could spark a global pandemic that could claim millions of lives.

International donors have pledged $1.9 billion to support a global fund to combat bird flu.

Protection Zone

Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace said Saturday that the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu has been detected in wild swans in his country.

He said H5N1 had been found in two dead swans in Sicily and was suspected in at least half-a-dozen birds elsewhere in the south of the country.

"We are relatively unworried as regards human health but there are reasons for concern for animal health," said the minister.

He tried to calm fears, saying that so far no one had caught the virus directly from wild birds.

All the human cases so far have been contracted from domestic poultry infected by wild birds.

The strain can be picked up by humans in close proximity to diseased birds, and can be lethal.

Storace was to sign an order banning for 20 days all transport of living domestic animals that may be infected by the virus in the affected regions.

The measures being applied by Italy are the establishment of a high-risk area (three-kilometer protection zone) around each of the outbreaks and a surrounding surveillance zone of 10 kilometers, the European Commission said.

In the protection zone, poultry must be kept indoors, movement of poultry is banned except directly to the slaughterhouse and the dispatch of meat outside the zone is forbidden except where products have undergone the controls provided for in EU food controls legislation.

In both the protection zone and the surveillance zone, on-farm bio-security measures must be strengthened, hunting of wild birds is banned and disease awareness of poultry owners and their families must be carried out, the commission said.

Mutation

"Only two mutations are needed for it to become easily transmissible among humans," said Dr. Nabarro

In a related development, a senior UN experts said that the bird flu virus is only two mutations away from a form that can spread easily among people, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die.

"Only two mutations are needed for it to become easily transmissible among humans," Dr. David Nabarro, who heads the UN drive to contain the virus, told weekly Expresso.

"I wake up every morning thinking that today could be the day that I will see a report about a strange case of bird flu among humans," he added.

Experts have long warned that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted by humans and spark a global pandemic potentially killing millions.

Nabarro said he has told governments around the world to prepare for the arrival of a human-to-human strain of the virus "as if this will happen tomorrow."

In 1918, an influenza pandemic that is believed to have originated in birds killed more than 40 million people around the world.

Subsequent pandemics in 1957 and 1968 had lower death rates but still caused widespread disruption.

In Moscow , the G8 warned Saturday of the risk of a bird flu pandemic.

"We acknowledge the risk of a possible avian flu pandemic and its potential economic and financial impacts," the group's finance ministers said in a statement.

"We call on the donor community to provide financial support to poor countries fighting the epidemic."

The virus has been confirmed in the past week to have crossed into Africa for the first time.

Nigeria announced Wednesday, February 8, that the disease has spread to at least four poultry farms in the country and many other suspected outbreaks have been reported.

The Nigeria outbreak "confirms the fears... about the threat to other African countries," said Samuel Jutzi, director of the health and animal products division at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).