The virus is endemic in Java, Sumatra, Bali and southern Sulawesi with sporadic outbreaks reported from other areas, the FAO said.

By June 2008, more than 2,000 surveillance and response teams will be active in more than 300 districts in areas of the country where the disease is endemic, Mr Domenech said.

But that may not be enough.

"Indonesia is facing an uphill battle against a virus that is difficult to contain. Major human and financial resources, stronger political commitment and strengthened co-ordination between the central, provincial and district authorities are required to improve surveillance and control measures," Mr Domenech said.

More than 30 countries have reported outbreaks in the past year, in most cases involving wild birds such as swans.

The virus has killed at least 201 people since 2003, according to the WHO. Countries with confirmed human deaths are: Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Laos, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

In total, the virus is known to have infected 329 people since 2003, according to the WHO. Many of the dead are children and young adults.

The WHO says that Vietnam and Indonesia have the highest number of cases, accounting for 132 of the total deaths.

The H5N1 virus is not new to science and was responsible for an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Scotland in 1959. Britain confirmed new cases in birds in Scotland in April 2006 and in eastern England in February 2007.

H5N1 is not the only bird flu virus. There are numerous strains. For example, an outbreak in 2003 of the H7N7 bird flu virus in the Netherlands led to the destruction of more than 30 million birds, around a third of the country's poultry stock. About 2.7 million were destroyed in Belgium and around 400,000 in Germany. In the Netherlands, 89 people were infected with the H7N7 virus, of whom one (a veterinarian) died.

The H5N1 virus made the first known jump into humans in Hong Kong in 1997, infecting 18 people and killing six of them. The government ordered the immediate culling of the territory's entire poultry flock, ending the outbreak.

Symptoms of bird flu in humans have ranged from typical influenza-like symptoms, such as fever, cough, sore throat and muscle aches, to eye inflammations (conjunctivitis), pneumonia, acute respiratory distress, viral pneumonia, and other severe and life-threatening complications.

A mathematical analysis has confirmed that H5N1 avian influenza spread from person to person in Indonesia in April, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

They said they had developed a tool to run quick tests on disease outbreaks to see if dangerous epidemics or pandemics may be developing.

Health officials around the world agree that a pandemic of influenza is overdue, and they are most worried by the H5N1 strain of avian influenza that has been spreading through flocks from Asia to Africa. Photo

It rarely passes to humans, but since 2003 it has infected 322 people and killed 195 of them.

Most have been infected directly by birds. But a few clusters of cases have been seen and officials worry most about the possibility that the virus has acquired the ability to pass easily and directly from one person to another. That would spark a pandemic.

The cluster contained a chain of infection that involved a 10-year-old boy who probably caught the virus from his 37-year-old aunt, who had been exposed to dead poultry and chicken feces, the presumed source of infection. The boy then probably passed the virus to his father. The possibility that the boy infected his father was supported by genetic sequencing data. Other person-to-person transmissions in the cluster are backed up with statistical data. All but one of the flu victims died, and all had had sustained close contact with other ill family members prior to getting sick -- a factor considered crucial for transmission of this particular flu strain.

In an attempt to contain the spread of the virus, the local health authorities eventually placed more than 50 surviving relatives and close contacts under voluntary quarantine and all, except for pregnant women and infants, received antiviral medication as a precaution.

"The containment strategy was implemented late in the game, so it could have been just luck that the virus burned out," Longini said. "It went two generations and then just stopped, but it could have gotten out of control. The world really may have dodged a bullet with that one, and the next time we might not be so lucky," he said.

"The next pandemic will certainly happen," Margaret Chan told reporters following a forum on the need to improve international health security, noting it was impossible to guess when it might happen or how severe it might be.

Since late 2003, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has prompted the slaughter of millions of birds across Asia and caused the deaths of more than 170 people worldwide, about one-third of them in Indonesia, according to WHO.

The virus has been identified in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, in what Chan called an unprecedented spread.

"We cannot let our guard down," Chan said. "My advice for all member states is to maintain vigilance, to prepare for the pandemic. One thing we know for certain is that any country that is prepared will see less damage."

Meanwhile, in this country the new CDC guidelines that now rank pandemics in terms of categories 1 through 5, similar to hurricanes, are making the rounds in the media, and working its way through the government bureaucracy down to the states. The meat of the proposal? if there's a category 4 or 5 pandemic (H5N1 or some other), the schools in your town will close for up to three months, and large public gatherings will be canceled. That's because kids are a major vector in spreading flu and other respiratory diseases (ask any parent of a second grader or day care kid).

Did you know that? Would that affect you or your kids in any way? You bet it would. The task now is to figure out how to mitigate the consequences of such a move. For example, in addition to whether you can afford to stay home, the schools may have to turn to long distance learning. Businesses would have to telecommute where possible. And the kids, now being home and unable to go to the mall, would have to figure out how to entertain themselves.

Any chance thay'd - uh - want to use the internets? And would it be prepared for the onslaught of Kids At Home?

Today's guidelines are partly based on a recent study of how 44 cities fared in the 1918 epidemic conducted jointly by the C.D.C. and the University of Michigan’s medical school. Historians and epidemiologists pored over hospital records and newspaper clippings, trying to determine what factors partly spared some cities and doomed others.

While a few tiny towns escaped the epidemic entirely by cutting off all contact with outside, most cities took less drastic measures. These included isolating the sick and quarantining homes and rooming houses, closing schools, churches, bars and other gathering places, canceling parades, ball games, theaters and other public events, staggering factory hours, barring door-to-door sales, discouraging the use of public transport and encouraging the use of face masks.

The most effective measure seemed to be moving early and quickly. For example, said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian and one of the study's leaders, Philadelphia, the worst-hit city, had nearly three times as many sick and dead per capita as St. Louis, which had was hit weeks later by the virus moving inland from the Eastern Seaboard and had time to react as soon as flu cases rose above averages.

"No matter how you set up the model," Dr. Markel said, "the cities that acted earlier and with more layered protective measures fared better."

The world is years away from stamping out bird flu in poultry, and the threat of a human pandemic will remain until it does, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Addressing the U.N. agency's 34-state executive board, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that in the past three years the H5N1 bird flu virus had proven virulent.

"As long as the virus continues to circulate in birds, the threat of a pandemic will persist. The world is years away from control in the agricultural sector," she said.

"Influenza viruses are notoriously sloppy, unstable and capricious. It is impossible to predict their behavior," she told the board, which meets twice a year.

"The message is straightforward: we must not let down our guard," she said.

The deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza is making a seasonal resurgence in Asia and could easily spread to Europe again this year, the World Health Organisation warned on Sunday.

The alarm follows four human deaths in Indonesia in the last five days, the first human case in China for six months (though the infected man has since recovered) and new poultry outbreaks in Vietnam – despite a huge campaign against it – and northern Nigeria.

"We are convinced that we're in a repeat of last year and the year before when the virus began to get very active again [in the northern hemisphere winter] and spread from Asia into the Middle East and beyond," said Peter Cordingley, the WHO spokesman for the western Pacific region.

Indonesia, where 61 people have died since 2005, remained the "biggest flashpoint" but nowhere in the region "has got it licked". "Most countries are becoming better prepared and the countries that were caught out last year, especially wealthier ones in Europe and close to Europe, we hope are going to be better prepared," he said. "But we're still losing more than we're winning."

Early tests of skin-patch vaccines are beginning in hundreds of volunteers, one version designed to protect against the flu and another to prevent travelers' diarrhea.

The idea isn't just pain-free vaccination. The National Institutes of Health is helping fund patch research in hopes of strengthening today's imperfect flu shots, and gaining extra help if bird flu or some other super-flu ever triggers a pandemic.

Indeed, patch developer Iomai Corp. proposes that the mailman, not a doctor, deliver flu vaccine during a pandemic. Once a vaccine is brewed, simply ship patches to people's homes with instructions to slap one on.

Doctors might not like the go-it-alone method. But the technology's main promise may be in developing countries. Unlike syringe-based vaccines, patches wouldn't need refrigeration — nor pose the infection risk of reused needles, a continuing problem.

Half of the cases occurred in people under the age of 20 years; 90% of cases occurred in people under the age of 40 years.

The overall case-fatality rate was 56%. Case fatality was high in all age groups but was highest in persons aged 10 to 39 years.

The case-fatality profile by age group differs from that seen in seasonal influenza, where mortality is highest in the elderly.

The overall case-fatality rate was highest in 2004 (73%), followed by 63% to date in 2006, and 43% in 2005.

Assessment of mortality rates and the time intervals between symptom onset and hospitalization and between symptom onset and death suggests that the illness pattern has not changed substantially during the three years.

Deaths from the disease surged in the winter for the last three years, the report released Friday said, so a rise in fatal cases can be expected late this year even if the virus does not mutate into a form more easily transmitted.

Moreover, the report warned, the risk of the virus becoming more transmissible remains high "because of the widespread distribution of the H5N1 virus in poultry and the continued exposure of humans."

Doctors were completely unable to stop or slow its spread; the killer flu eventually traveled to the general population and worked its way from East to West across the United States. The influenza spread so fast that hospitals and morgues were quickly overrun. People were often forced to live with the dead bodies of family members because there were so many dead and dying that the health system and city morgues were completely overwhelmed. Many health workers were also sick and dying themselves. Coffins quickly became unavailable and bodies were stacked up on porches and next to houses. Symptoms of the disease were terrifying and violent: incredible pain, blood pouring from noses and eyes, intense fever, headache, weakness, body aches and delirium. People often died after gasping for breath for hours trying to clear a red, frothy liquid from their lungs. Mayors in cities lied to their citizens and said the plague would not come. But it came and even during the epidemic many newspapers reported that there was no cause for alarm or told people the virus had peaked when it had not. In 1918, influenza was a killing machine that raged from coast to coast, killing over 600,000 Americans. In October, 1918 influenza killed 195,000 Americans in a single month.

PHASE ONE
Inter-pandemic phase -- Low risk of human cases.

PHASE TWO
New virus in animals, but no human cases -- Higher risk of human cases

PHASE THREE
Pandemic Alert -- No or very limited human-to-human transmission

PHASE FOUR
Clusters of human cases suggesting increased adaptability of the virus -- Evidence of increased human-to-human transmission

PHASE FIVE
Larger clusters of human cases over longer periods -- Evidence of significant human-to-human transmission

PHASE SIX
Pandemic -- Efficient and sustained human-to-human transmission

Also today, the WHO reiterated that it will not raise its global pandemic alert level from phase 3 (human infection, but no or only rare human-to-human spread) to phase 4 (small clusters with limited human-to-human transmission, but spread is highly localized). The agency said this week that human-to-human-to-human (two-generation) transmission might have occurred in the North Sumatra cluster. But officials have observed no further spread beyond the family cluster and no ominous mutations in H5N1 viruses that have been analyzed.

Paul Gully, senior adviser to WHO's top avian flu official, Margaret Chan, said in a third Reuters report, "Our feeling now is there is nothing new that has happened which would make us want to consider moving to level 4."

About 13 000 people were quarantined in the Romanian capital on Monday as troops and police sealed off streets in response to the city's second bird-flu outbreak, said officials.

The mayor of the southern fourth district, Adrian Inimaroiu, said residents would be cut off and all businesses in the area would be closed during the quarantine period of up to three weeks.

The move came after the agriculture ministry earlier on Monday confirmed the presence of the H5 bird-flu virus in dead chickens found in the neighbourhood, the latest of dozens of outbreaks of avian flu in Romania this spring.

Inimaroiu said, urging residents to stay calm, that "about 40 streets have been blocked" in the Luica quarter.

All seven people infected with bird flu in a cluster of Indonesian cases can be linked to other patients, according to disease trackers investigating possible human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus.

A team of international experts has been unable to find animals that might have infected the people, the World Health Organization said in a statement today. In one case, a 10-year- old boy who caught the virus from his aunt may have passed it to his father, the first time officials have seen evidence of a three-person chain of infection, an agency spokeswoman said. Six of the seven people have died.

Almost all of the 218 cases of H5N1 infections confirmed by the WHO since late 2003 can be traced to direct contact with sick or dead birds. Strong evidence of human-to-human transmission may prompt the global health agency to convene a panel of experts and consider raising the pandemic alert level, said Maria Cheng, an agency spokeswoman.

"Considering the evidence and the size of the cluster, it's a possibility," Cheng said in a telephone interview. "It depends on what we're dealing with in Indonesia. It's an evolving situation."

"There's no supporting evidence to suggest that this is a continuing environmental source that we've uncovered yet in the investigation," said WHO spokesperson Dick Thompson.

"The investigation is still ongoing. We wouldn't discount the possibility that it is human-to-human transmission."

Limited spread of the virus among people is believed to have happened on several previous occasions. But in each of these suspected cases, transmission of the virus petered out. Sustained human-to-human spread of the virus would be needed to trigger a pandemic.

Meanwhile, an Indonesian official revealed that the man who died Monday refused treatment and fled from authorities after falling ill - behaviour that highlights the difficulties of disease containment in settings where an unfamiliar disease is extracting a high death toll.

In North America we have an expression: "Give it the old college try."

In other words, when the other team is leading and the game is almost lost, don't give up. Make one more attempt to score a goal and win the game.

Since last summer, health authorities have considered the chance of smothering a pandemic outbreak in its cradle: Identify a real human-to-human spread. Send in an army of medical experts. Give Tamiflu or some other antiviral to every human being you meet in the neighbourhood. Kill every duck and chicken. Then hope you stamped it out.

Given the ominous outbreaks in Tanah Karo and Surabaya, I can well imagine that the Americans would ship Tamiflu to Indonesia. It would probably do more good there than in Los Angeles or Miami.

The birds, which have had the run of Key West for more than 50 years, are one of the island town's most famous tourist attractions.

But local officials have decided to evict them over health concerns.

Although bird flu has not reached the US, Key West lies on a bird migration path, officials say.

Local officials on Tuesday approved a resolution to bar the free-roaming fowl from the town's streets and parks.

The UK's chief veterinary officer, Debbie Reynolds, said bird flu could stay in Britain for some time.

"We simply don't know, but of course that's why we've got our programme of wild bird surveillance.

"It's been very extensive; over 3,000 wild birds tested already this year, and over 400 swans.

"There are more under way, being tested at the moment, and any wild swan that's reported found dead should be collected and tested," Dr Reynolds said.

"So the arrival of one bird in Scotland does not really add to the risk of this virus emerging as a human strain.

"I will be eating chicken tonight but it will be well-cooked chicken. The evidence from the Food Standards Agency is that in properly cooked meat the virus is killed."

Following the detection of bird flu, the Afghan government has put an immediate ban on poultry imports from neighbouring Pakistan.

Nine hundred chicken farms have been closed in Jalalabad and the government and the UN plan to begin culling birds in the affected areas.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul reports that chicken has started disappearing from markets in Jalalabad and Kunar but are available elsewhere in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat.

UN and Afghan government officials say a public awareness campaign about the virus is going to be launched.

"There will be a reasonable possibility of a domestic fowl outbreak" as migrating birds mix with ducks, chickens and other birds in the U.S," Chertoff said. But he cautioned against panic, noting that the Agriculture Department has dealt with other strains of bird flu for years.

"If we get a wild bird or even a domestic chicken that gets infected with avian flu, we're going to be able to deal with it, because we've got a lot of experience with that," Chertoff said, speaking to newspaper editors and publishers.

"There's no way you can protect the United States by building a big cage around it and preventing wild birds from flying in and out," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns said.

U.S. spy satellites are tracking the infected flocks, which started in Asia and are now heading north to Siberia and Alaska, where they will soon mingle with flocks from the North American flyways.

"What we're watching in real time is evolution," said Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And it's a biological process, and it is, by definition, unpredictable."

Dr Chan told over 30 experts in Geneva that the agency's top priority was to keep the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu from mutating.

"Should this effort fail, we want to ensure that measures are in place to mitigate the high levels of morbidity, mortality and social and economic disruption that a pandemic can bring to this world," she said.

WHO says 175 people are confirmed to have caught bird flu, and 95 of them have died.

Global influenza pandemics - as opposed to annual recurrences of seasonal flu - tend to strike periodically. In the 20th century, there were pandemics in 1918, 1957 and 1968.

Bird flu could potentially cause more deaths than those from the global flu pandemics. Because the H5N1 virus is airborne, it is easier to transmit and more contagious than HIV/AIDS, WHO officials said.

In testimony to a congressional panel on his agency's budget for combating a possible avian flu outbreak among humans, Leavitt told senators that no one knows when or if the virus will pose a threat to people. But, he said, "it's just a matter of time -- it may be very soon" when wild birds and possibly poultry flocks contract the disease.

Leavitt said that infection of birds alone in the United States with the H5N1 virus would not create a public health emergency. Such an emergency would occur if the disease mutated so that it became easily transferred from human to human.

Nevertheless, Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee criticized the Bush administration's preparedness, saying not enough federal funds were being allocated for vaccine production, stockpiling other medical supplies, disease detection and community readiness.

"It could be the disaster of our time. Two billion dollars is not enough," North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad (news, bio, voting record), the senior Democrat on the committee, told Leavitt.

Conrad was referring the $2.3 billion in additional emergency funds the Bush administration has requested from Congress. Late last year, Congress approved a first injection of more than $3 billion in emergency money.

The study, prepared for the Sydney, Australia-based Lowy Institute think tank, says there are "enormous uncertainties" about whether a flu pandemic might happen, and where and when it might happen first.

But it says even a mild pandemic could kill 1.4 million people and cost $330 billion.

In its "ultra" or worst-case scenario, Hong Kong's economy is halved, the large-scale collapse of Asian economic activity causes global trade flows to dry up, and money flows out to safe havens in North America and Europe. Deaths could top 28 million in China and 24 million in India.

Since then, government and health officials have been swarming the place, trying to control the spread of the deadly disease.

For years, the people of Navapur had to contend with bad roads, poor electricity and social issues such as deaths of children due to malnutrition.

Now they have to deal with bird flu - and many of them do not even know what it is, let alone how it is spread.

All areas within 3km (nearly 2 miles) of Navapur have been quarantined and 60 medical teams have been deployed in the area with a clear brief of slaughtering all the chickens - nearly 900,000 in number.

Dr Nabarro said the WHO was anticipating further outbreaks in other parts of Africa.

"If it's in Nigeria it might also be in other countries that are less well-equipped."

He said governments and ordinary people would have to take "very, very strong precautions" to protect themselves and stop the disease spreading.

"We've got to have all countries, particularly in West Africa, being very vigilant for bird die-offs, which are the indicator of bird flu being in the population."

For two years Nigeria has banned poultry imports from countries which have experienced cases of bird flu.

There are fears that the disease could easily spread in Africa because of a lack of safeguards.

"What is most important now is not how it got into Nigeria, but how it can be prevented from leaving Nigeria," Cape Town ornithologist Phil Hockey told Reuters.

Mr Haruna said affected farmers from Kano were still waiting to be quarantined.

A 54-year-old woman from the town of Raniya is thought to be the most serious of the suspected cases.

Iraqi officials say a teenage girl died of the strain two weeks ago.

Shanjin Abdel Qader died in a hospital in the nearby city of Sulaimaniya on 17 January, after an illness lasting 15 days.

Initial test results from a WHO laboratory were negative, but after Iraqi tests showed indications of H5N1 the organisation agreed to a further examination in a UK laboratory.

Guenael Rodier, a special adviser on communicable diseases at the WHO, told the BBC that while he was not surprised by the case, it was a significant development.

"It shows a geographic extension of human cases and certainly increases altogether the overall likelihood that at some point this virus will adapt to humans," he said.

"So it's important this is going to be investigated, and a WHO team is on its way to the Far East and Turkey with nationals to investigate."

Amid the flu fears there actually was a lot of good news this year. Cancer overtook heart disease as the leading cause of death among Americans 85 and under. Why is that good, you ask? Because deaths from both are falling, it's just that those from heart disease have fallen more dramatically.

Two vaccines proved effective against human papilloma virus, or HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer, a big killer around the world.

New-generation cancer drugs like Avastin and Herceptin, which more precisely target the disease and leave healthy cells alone, also scored big victories in studies on lung and breast cancer patients respectively, notes the American Society of Clinical Oncology in its first annual report on cancer progress.

Five years ago, these drugs were in the "hope" stage but now are in wide use, said Dr. Roy Herbst, a lung cancer expert at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Claims made by the companies about their treatments include phrases like "prevents avian flu," "a natural virus shield" and "kills the virus," the FDA said.

Because of these claims, the agency considers their products, most of which are marketed as dietary supplements, to be new drugs that require approval before they can be sold.

The nine companies are: Sacred Mountain Management Inc., BODeSTORE.com, Melvin Williams, Iceland Health Inc., PolyCil Health Inc., PRB Pharmaceuticals Inc., Chozyn LLC, Vitacost.com and Healthworks 2000.

Following United Press International's report Friday that Thai doctors were expressing concern H5N1 may have achieved human-to-human transmission, some Indonesian doctors came out in agreement.

"There are just too many people who have it," a health official in Jakarta said. "In many cases, it is difficult to establish any contact with birds."

Another was quoted by WorldNetDaily as saying avian flu has "spread all over the city."

Two female farmers from eastern Anhui province died from the deadly strain in November. A young boy from central Henan also caught it but recovered.

The H5N1 virus has killed nearly 70 people in South-East Asia since the outbreak began in 2003.

The girl at the centre of China's latest case has been suffering from a fever and pneumonia since 23 November and has been undergoing emergency treatment, state media report.

In China's human cases, the virus has mutated "to a certain degree," health ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an was quoted as saying.

"But the mutation cannot cause human-to-human transmission of the avian flu," he noted.

China this month confirmed its first three human cases of bird flu, two of which were fatal. The disease has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003.

Health officials fear that the virus could mutate to the extent where it is easily transmitted from human-to-human, an event that could lead to a global pandemic capable of killing hundreds of millions of people.

Dr. Karen Smith, public health director for Napa County, California, discussed the public health consequences of bird flu (avian influenza) during an Internet chat November 23.

"It is very important to keep in mind that avian influenza is currently a problem almost exclusively in BIRD populations and in limited areas of the world," Smith said in the webchat, hosted by the U.S. Department of State. "Remember that despite millions of exposures, only 126 human cases have been documented to date and there is currently no evidence of person-to-person transmission of this virus."

"To date the only humans to develop avian influenza are those with direct contact with poultry," she said.

Smith added that for an influenza virus to develop pandemic potential, it "must easily infect humans, it must be transmissible from person to person, and it must retain its virulence in order to result in significant morbidity or mortality. These criteria have not been met and there is no way to predict when, if ever, they will be."

What would be the scenario if migratory birds were found to be positive for the strains of H5 that are of particular concern for mutating to a virus transmissible from human to human?

A -- Dr. Karen Smith: Both state and federal agencies are monitoring for die offs among migratory waterfowl. When a die off is seen, the birds are tested for influenza viruses. If HPAI H5N1 were detected, all local public health, agricultural commissioners and other local and state agencies would be notified. Increased surveillance among domestic flocks would then occur. Poultry farmers would be given instructions on how to protect their flocks from coming into contact with wild waterfowl, as this is believed to be the main route of introduction of the virus into domestic flocks. In addition restrictions on the movement of domestic birds into and out of the affected area would likely be put in place. Culling of wild flocks has not been shown to be effective and would probably not be done. If domestic flocks were affected, however, those flocks would be culled and the environment disinfected.

uwait reported the first known case of deadly bird flu in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, saying a culled flamingo was carrying the same strain of the H5N1 virus that has killed more than 60 people in Asia.

Kuwait, like other countries in the region, has banned imports of live poultry and birds from avian flu-stricken areas of Asia, but experts said they had expected migratory birds like the flamingo to bring the virus to the Middle East.

Kuwait announced the discovery of two bird flu cases on Thursday but officials were not able to say until now whether they were dealing with the more dangerous strain of the virus.

The magnitude of suffering caused by the next human flu pandemic will be "incalculable" if the world is unprepared, the chief of the UN health agency said Monday as he urged countries to draw up plans for preparations.

At the first major international co-ordination meeting on bird flu, a senior World Bank economist said that if the financial fallout of the SARS outbreak two years ago is any indication, a flu pandemic could cause world gross domestic product to drop by 2 per cent or more. That would amount to about $800-billion (U.S.) in losses over the course of a year, said Milan Brahmbhatt.

Estimates of the number of people who would die in a new pandemic have varied widely between two million and 360 million, but WHO says a reasonable maximum would be 7.4 million.

Canada has discovered a strain of H5 avian flu in 33 wild migratory ducks but it is unlikely to be the killer H5N1 strain which has spread from Southeast Asia to Europe, a top health official said Monday.

Jim Clark of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said a recent survey of 4,800 healthy wild birds had found the H5 virus in 28 ducks in the eastern province of Quebec and five in the central province of Manitoba.

While most Siberian flocks don’t try to cross the Pacific to North America, some do cross the narrow Bering Strait to Alaska.

If those birds mingle with birds from Alaska, "there is the possibility the virus could be transmitted to waterfowl or shorebirds that make their way here next fall," Brand said.

While many severely infected birds usually die within a few days and are unable to fly very far, other hardier varieties could carry the disease.

Among the Arctic species under suspicion are hardier, long-distance fliers like eiders, gulls and geese. "It probably will be spread by one that isn’t killed very easily by it," Brand said.

A parrot that died in quarantine in the UK has tested positive for avian flu, the government has said.

The Department for the Environment, Fisheries and Food (Defra) has not said if it is the lethal strain H5N1.

It is the first case of avian flu in Britain - it has been found in Romania, Turkey and Greece after apparently being carried from Asia by wild birds.

Maliuc joins the Danube delta village of Ceamurlia de Jos as the second place in Romania to have confirmed it has the virus.

Preliminary tests suggest bird flu has also arrived in European Russia, west of the Ural mountains, having been found in Asian Siberia already.

Russian laboratories said H5N1 had been detected in birds in Tula, about 220km (137 miles) south of Moscow.

Greece said on Monday it had detected one turkey with bird flu on the eastern Aegean island of Chios, becoming the first EU country where the virus has spread to.

"The Center for Veterinary Institutes has informed us that one of nine poultry samples has tested positive to bird flu (H5) antibodies," the agriculture ministry said in a statement.

State-run television quotes authorities as saying first bird flu case has been confirmed in Greece and tests and for the deadly H5N