UK, Hungarian bird flu "essentially identical"

LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) Tests on H5N1 bird flu viruses found in Britain and Hungary showed they are ''essentially identical'' and the most likely transmission route was from poultry to poultry, Britain said today.

The government said in a statement it had not found any evidence of illegal or unsafe movements of poultry products from Hungary to Britain and was still investigating all possible routes of transmission.

Tests on the two strains of avian influenza were carried out at Britain's Veterinary Laboratory Agency this week. The final results showed a very high similarity (99.96 pct) at the whole genome level.

''These results indicate that the viruses are essentially identical,'' the statement said.

''Although other European viruses have shown close relationships to these viruses, these levels of identity are much closer than with other Asian lineage H5 viruses for which data is available, including those isolated from wild birds in Europe in 2005/06,'' the VLA's Chief Avian Virologist Ian Brown said.

Britain's deputy chief veterinarian Fred Landeg said the working hypothesis, based on the work of the VLA, was that the virus had most likely been transmitted from poultry to poultry.

''However, I must reiterate that we are not discounting any line of inquiry and this is an on-going investigation,'' he added.

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