A PARROT held in quarantine has died of avian flu — the first case of the disease in Britain since 1992, the Government announced last night.

It was infected with the H5 virus, but it has not been confirmed whether this was H5N1, the most deadly strain of the disease.

The bird, which died two days ago, was one of a consignment of 148 from Surinam, in South America, which arrived in Britain on September 16. The birds were held in a biosecure quarantine unit with a batch of 216 from Taiwan.

All have now been destroyed and all staff who came in contact with them have been given antiviral treatment. The location of the quarantine unit has not been revealed.

As the birds were quarantined — normal practice for birds imported into the EU — veterinary authorities are confident that they could not have spread the infection to poultry or to wild birds.

The European Commission said yesterday that it was preparing to ban imports of live poultry and poultry products from Croatia after the discovery of the bird flu virus on samples taken from swans in the country. The virus was confirmed in samples from six of twelve swans found dead in a lake.

As the main focus of H5 infection has been the Far East, the suspicion is that the parrot caught the infection from the Taiwanese birds. But last night Debby Reynolds, the Chief Veterinary Officer, refused to speculate about the route of infection. She 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. An investigation is going on, and I cannot say any more for the moment.”

She said that the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had been advised by the Health Protection Agency that it would be very difficult for any human being to have caught H5 flu from the dead bird.

No tests have yet been carried out on the birds that shared the same enclosure, but when these are complete they could provide clues about how the disease spread.

“The incident showed the importance of the UK’s quarantine system,” Ms Reynolds said. “We have had similar incidents in the past where disease has been discovered but successfully contained as a result of our quarantine arrangements.”

Avian flu is a highly infectious viral disease that affects poultry, pigeons and other birds. It is a notifiable disease, which was last confirmed in Britain in 1992.

In the Far East, veterinary specialists have blamed the movement of poultry and caged birds, including fighting cocks, for the spread of the disease. This is considered to be a much more likely route of infection than migrating birds.

Birds imported into the European Union must remain in quarantine for at least 30 days. The parrot was right at the end of this period when it died.

News of the British avian flu case comes as the European Commission said that it was considering setting aside a €1 billion (£677 million) “solidarity fund” to be used in the event of a human flu pandemic.

The money would be used for anti-viral drugs and vaccines. Markos Kyprianou, the European Commissioner for Health, said that the fund had not been finalised and would have to be agreed by the 25 member states.

In Thailand, the seven-year-old son of a man who has had bird flu diagnosed may also have the disease. But health authorities in Bangkok, awaiting confirmatory tests, said it was unlikely that the virus had transmitted person to person.

As winter approaches, the disease is flaring up again in east and South-East Asia, the most likely source of a human pandemic, according to the World Health Organisation. It says that since the disease resurfaced in 2003 after a brief outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997, 61 people have died of bird flu.

DEADLY STRAIN

There have so far been 67 human deaths from the virus in South-East Asia in connection with the H5NI strain

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