No measures taken to prevent bird flu at Games

updated 9:08 p.m. ET Feb. 20, 2006

TURIN, Italy - No specific precautions against the bird flu virus are being taken at the Winter Olympics after a strain of the virus was detected in the south of Italy.

Games organizers said Sunday they would follow the lead of regional health authorities in Piedmont, where the games are being held.

“It’s up to them to decide if any precautionary measures must be put in place,” said Giuseppe Gattino, spokesman for the TOROC organizing committee. “They will let us know if they want us to give specific information to the athletes. At the moment there are no cases in Piedmont.”

Italy’s Health Ministry announced Saturday that the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus was detected in the three southern Italian regions of Puglia, Calabria and Sicily. The areas are more than 600 miles from Turin.

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The outbreak was said to pose no immediate threat to humans because only wild birds had been infected.

Bird flu has killed at least 88 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003, according to the World Health Organization’s most recent update.

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