British Bird Flu Worker Is Hospitalized

LONDON – A worker who helped deal with the bird flu outbreak in eastern England is under observation at a hospital, the Health Protection Agency said Tuesday.

The worker, who was not identified, was suffering from a mild respiratory illness and was undergoing tests, the agency said.

Sky News identified the patient as a veterinarian, but the agency did not confirm this.

All 159,000 turkeys at a vast commercial farm in Holton, about 130 miles northeast of London, were slaughtered after 2,500 birds died of the H5N1 strain last week. Many countries moved to ban British poultry imports in the wake of he outbreak, the first on a British farm.

Officials have said that the outbreak of bird flu on a farm owned by Bernard Matthews PLC, Europe’s biggest turkey producer poses a "negligible" risk to the public or the poultry industry. Several countries have banned British poultry imports as a result, however.

Bird flu has killed or prompted the culling of millions of birds worldwide since late 2003, when it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks. It has killed at least 164 people worldwide, but remains difficult for humans to catch.

Experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, potentially sparking a global pandemic. So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with sick birds.

British government scientists have yet to identify the source of the outbreak. The strain of the virus is identical to one found among geese in Hungary last month. It was the first known case of the H5N1 strain within the European Union since August 2006.