Romania today said it has detected the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in domestic birds in a village 80 kilometres west of Bucharest and in a wild goose in the city of Buzau.
Avian flu has been found in 40 villages and a small Black Sea resort since the virus was first detected in the Danube Delta in October. Birds have been culled swiftly, and Romania has not reported any cases in humans.
"We isolated the H5N1 virus in the village of Catunu in Dambovita county and we will start to take regular measures of culling all the birds and quarantining the village," said an official from the country's animal health agency.
He said the samples would be sent to a British laboratory to confirm whether the virus found was a highly pathogenic type.
"We also found the bird flu virus in a wild goose in the city of Buzau, but there is no need to panic because nobody touched it," he said.
Buzau, with a population of around 150,000, is some 100 kilometres north of the capital.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and local experts have warned that Romania could see human cases of bird flu because its rural areas, where around 45 per cent of the 22 million population live, lack proper water and sewerage systems.
The H5N1 virus remains difficult for humans to catch but has infected 174 people since 2003, killing 94, according to latest figures from the WHO. Experts fear it will mutate into a form that spreads easily among people.