MUMBAI/PARIS: India said it was testing dozens of people for bird flu yesterday, while France confirmed its first avian cases of the H5N1 virus as the deadly strain spread around the globe.

The Indian Government said yesterday that earlier fears of the country's first human victim were unfounded, after "preliminary" tests on a dead farmer showed he was not affected.

"Preliminary investigations by the rapid response teams at Navapur indicate that this patient had no exposure to poultry," a federal health ministry statement said.

Avian influenza has flared anew in recent weeks, spreading among birds in Europe and parts of Africa, and prompting authorities to impose bans on the poultry trade, introduce mass culling and vaccinate poultry flocks.

In India, officials launched an emergency campaign to try to contain the virus, which experts fear might mutate to allow it to pass between people, potentially triggering a pandemic.

Blood samples of 30 people from bird flu-hit Nandurbar District in western Maharashtra State had been sent for testing for the H5N1 virus, a top official said.

"All these people were showing flu-like symptoms and we have sent their blood and sputum samples for testing for bird flu," said Vijay Satbir Singh, the state's top health official.

India, the world's second most populous nation and a major poultry producer, reported its first bird flu cases in poultry on Saturday, after 50,000 birds died in Maharashtra.

In France, Europe's biggest poultry producer, the Farm Ministry confirmed that a duck found dead on Monday in the east of the country had H5N1. France's H5N1 case was one of several wild ducks found dead near Lyon in a region famous for the quality of its chickens.

Elsewhere, authorities in northern Spain are testing a duck found dead in a lake to see if it carried H5N1, while Britain said bird flu was now more likely to reach its shores.

Germany and Austria have reported more cases of bird flu, while authorities in Bulgaria put a man in an isolation chamber and were testing him for H5N1 after two of his ducks died.

The disease has also spread to Egypt, which reported its first cases of H5N1 on Friday, while in Nigeria authorities are culling poultry and urging people not to eat sick birds after outbreaks there.

Indonesia confirmed on Saturday that a 19th person had died of bird flu, which has been reported in chickens and other domesticated fowl in most provinces of the sprawling country of 220 million people.

The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 171 people worldwide since late 2003, killing 93 of them. Two hundred million birds across Asia, parts of the Middle East, Europe and Africa have died of the virus or been culled.

Source: China Daily