The likelihood that some kids in Romania come in contact and play with sick or dead birds is not zero.

All of the cases confirmed by the laboratory are people who had close contact with infected, sick or dead poultry. The major point now is to control the outbreak in poultry as it is the source of infection in humans.

Clearly there was a poor understanding as to how much spread of h5n1 there was in poultry in Turkey.

It's clear that the virus is well-established in the region.

It's unlikely we're dealing with false positives. There's no reason to believe it's wrong.

It is worrisome because it shows that the problem is expanding ... the frontline of the disease is getting bigger and this is not good news.

It seems like it has spread much more widely in animals and in more districts that was initially thought.

As long as we're dealing only with migratory birds being found here and there, I don't think it's a big deal, frankly. The big issue is if we start to have domestic poultry infected. Then it would start to be a problem ... a higher risk for transmission to humans.

Any countries in the regions which have situations in the rural areas similar to what we have here in Turkey could obviously have some diseases in animals and potentially in humans and that requires to strengthen surveillance systems both for humans and animals and to take all the measures necessary to control diseases in animals.

Compared to the numbers in Asia, we do not have too many deaths at the moment.