THE deadly strain of H5N1 bird flu has been detected in four European countries, carried by swans driven south by freezing weather in northern Europe.

Yesterday Slovenia joined Italy, Greece and Bulgaria in reporting cases of the infection among swans. None of the four has seen cases among domesticated birds or human beings.

On Saturday Francesco Storace, the Italian Health Minister, said that the strain responsible for more than 90 deaths in Asia had been found in dead swans in Sicily and elsewhere in the south of the country. “Twenty-one swans were infected by the virus, five of them with a virulent form,” he said. “We are relatively unworried as regards human health but there are reasons for concern for animal health.”

Officials said last night that the H5N1 strain had been detected in a sixth wild swan in southern Italy.

Emergency measures introduced by Italy include the establishment of a 2-mile (3.2km) protection zone around each of the outbreaks and a 6-mile surveillance zone, the European Commission said. Poultry in the zones will be kept indoors and may not be transported, except to slaughterhouses.

Similar measures have been agreed by Greece after the discovery of dead swans in northern Salonika, confirmed on Saturday to have been carrying H5N1.

The same strain was found last week in wild swans in the Bulgarian wetland region of Vidin, close to the Romanian border. In Romania, health officials ordered tests after a possible new case of bird flu of the H5 strain was detected at a farm in the Danube delta.

Health authorities in Slovenia yesterday reported the H5 bird flu virus in a swan, and have sent samples to the EU’s bird flu laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, for further tests. They have adopted the same protection measures as Greece and Italy.

The situation in Italy and other affected countries will be reviewed by the EU’s Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health, which meets on Thursday and Friday.

In Indonesia a woman died late on Friday after having been on a ventilator since Tuesday, according to a spokesman from Sulianti Saroso hospital in Jakarta, where she had been treated. Tests conducted by the health ministry indicated that the woman had bird flu. On Thursday another woman died of the virus.

Samples from both women have been sent to a Hong Kong laboratory for confirmation. They will be Indonesia’s 17th and 18th fatalities from the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus if the diagnosis is confirmed.

The disease has also established a foothold in Africa, with reports that it is spreading rapidly through poultry flocks in Nigeria and approaching the Niger border.

Agricultural officials were preparing to quarantine and disinfect two farms where tens of thousands of birds have died on the outskirts of Kano.

But even as the clean-up team donned their protective suits, officials 80 miles farther north gave warning of another suspected outbreak in Katsina, a short distance from Nigeria’s northern frontier.

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