THE most deadly strain of avian flu is feared to have spread to Europe for the first time, infecting birds in Turkey and Romania this weekend.

Tests will be carried out in Britain this week to see whether confirmed cases of bird flu are of the deadliest H5N1 strain, which has killed 65 people in Asia and has already spread to Kazakhstan and Russia.

Officials from the Department of Health and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are closely monitoring the situation amid fears that the killer strain is spreading west. It is feared that the H5N1 strain could mutate, causing a flu pandemic.

Turkish officials last night reported that 1,800 birds had died of avian flu at a farm in western Turkey a few miles from a nature reserve that attracts migrating birds. The authorities put a two-mile exclusion zone around the farm in the province of Balikesir.

The Romanian authorities announced that three birds had died from avian flu in Tulcea in the Danube delta marshlands. “A quarantine has been placed on all localities in Tulcea, and birds have been sacrificed,” said Ion Agafitei, head of the national health and veterinary association.

The delta contains Europe’s largest wetlands and is a winter migratory area for birds flying from Russia, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany to Africa.

The H5N1 strain has killed 65 people and millions of birds in Asia since 2003 and has been officially registered in six Russian regions in Siberia and the Urals, and has also been confirmed in Kazakhstan.

This weekend more than 700 people were given flu vaccines and the Romanian health ministry sent 100,000 extra vaccines to the affected region and neighbouring areas.

In Britain, the Department of Health said it had 2m vaccines and 14.6m courses of treatment should the H5N1 strain spread to this country, but added that the risk from migratory birds was low. “We take the possibility of a flu pandemic very seriously and it makes sense for the UK to be as prepared as we can be,” it said. “The risk of the H5N1 virus being spread to the UK is low and there is no evidence of [it] passing from human to human.”

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