The EU has ordered restrictions on bird shows and urged governments to vaccinate the birds in their zoos as part of the continent's defence against a possible bird flu pandemic.

The measures were announced late last night by the European Commission after a meeting of EU veterinary experts, who are still testing a dead turkey in Greece to see whether the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus has crossed the EU's borders.

Veterinary experts said that there should be an immediate EU-wide ban on the collection of birds for markets, shows, exhibitions and cultural events, except where national authorities gave specific permission, the statement said.

The scientists also said that governments should consider vaccinating birds kept in zoos and clarified the measures taken to restrict the import of birds from Russia.

The EC announced that a ban on the import of live birds and feathers would cover the whole of Russia except for regions in the northwest so far unaffected by the virus.

The recommendations were made as Markos Kyprianou, the European Commissioner for Health, revealed that a €1 billion "solidarity fund" could be set up by the EU in the event of a pandemic.

"In a case of a pandemic, it will finance the use or replacement of anti-virals or vaccines," said Mr Kyprianou, who stressed that the fund had not been finalised and still needed to be agreed by the 25 member states. The EU said yesterday that will carry out a bird flu preparedness exercise before the end of the year.

This morning, Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, told the BBC that Britain was among the countries that have taken the most precautions against a bird flu pandemic, which public health experts have warned would kill 2 to 5 million people worldwide and 50,000 people in the UK.

"The WHO confirmed to me yesterday that Britain is one of the best-prepared countries right across the world, but that doesn’t mean we are complacent," said Ms Hewitt, who will continue to meet EU health ministers in Hertfordshire today to discuss a coordinated response to the disease.

Elsewhere, the coordinator of the UN's response to bird flu said that the H5N1 strain of the disease seemed to be becoming more virulent among flocks of wild birds in China.

"There has been a shift in the susceptibility of wild fowl to H5N1," said David Nabarro, the UN coordinator for avian and human influenza, in Beijing. "That’s something that needs very careful attention if we’re going to be ready for possible introduction of the bird flu virus in other locations through wild fowl."

China announced yesterday that officials in Inner Mongolia had slaughtered almost 100,000 birds after an outbreak of H5N1 in a breeding facility. Today, public health officials in Shanghai said visitors would have the soles of their shoes sterilised before being allowed into the city.

In Thailand, the seven-year-old son of a farmer who died of bird flu on Wednesday is under close observation in hospital. The boy, who has pneumonia-like symptoms, is being treated with Tamiflu, the only drug known to relieve the symptoms of the bird flu virus.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, authorities have rushed to calm any panic about a father and son who were hospitalised with suspected bird flu. A senior health ministry official had said that the family could be evidence that the H5N1 virus was spreading from human to human.

But today, tests on the father and son proved negative for bird flu. "It doesn’t mean mutation," Georg Petersen, WHO’s Indonesia representative, told Reuters.

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