BUCHAREST, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The H5 strain of the bird flu virus has been found recently in dead poultry in central Romania, Romanian media reported on Saturday.

    The fowls were found in two farm households and on a chicken farm in Brasov county. The local government has taken quarantine measures and sent the dead poultry to Bucharest to find out whether they had been infected with the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus.

    Romanian authorities closed down its last bird flu quarantine zone in the east of the country on April 20. But the newly detected cases show that Romania still has a long way to go in its efforts to ward off the epidemic.

    The first bird flu case in Romania was detected in the Danube delta last October. Since then, the epidemic had spread to more regions of the country, bringing to 53 the number of restricted quarantine zones.

    No cases of human infections have been reported in the country.Enditem