SYDNEY: Scientists have detected the highly contagious H5 bird flu strain in a second Australian state, the nation’s agriculture minister said on Wednesday. Australia was for years the only continental landmass to be free of the H5 strain, which has caused severe disease and high death rates in poultry and wild birds worldwide. The first H5 case was confirmed in the state of Western Australia last week, with officials now warning of another case detected in a migratory seabird found hundreds of kilometers away in South Australia.

The H5N1 strain has been confirmed in a northern giant petrel, near where the virus was first detected in Western Australia.

The H5N1 variant of the virus was confirmed in a sick brown skua found on a remote beach near Esperance in Western Australia, about 700km southeast of Perth.