THE HAGUE: Dutch officials have detected bird flu on a third farm in the country, but cannot yet say if the strain is a highly contagious variety discovered earlier this week, officials said Friday.

The Dutch economic affairs ministry confirmed that a second bird flu outbreak detected on Thursday on a farm at Ter Aar, close to the first case, was the highly pathogenic H5N8 strain, previously detected only in Asia.

Some strains of avian influenza are fatal for chickens, and pose a health threat to humans, who can fall sick after handling infected poultry.

Dutch authorities have said human infection can only occur following “intense and direct contact” with infected birds.

The latest outbreak was found on a small farm in Kamperveen, around 100 kilometers north of the two other outbreaks, the economic affairs ministry said in a statement.

“The bird flu virus has been detected on a farm with around 10,000 chickens,” it said.

The birds will be destroyed and the farm disinfected, the ministry said, with tests being carried out to establish if the strain is H5N8.

Dutch officials on Sunday banned the transport of poultry around the Netherlands after the discovery of a highly infectious strain of bird flu following outbreaks of similar strains on the virus in Britain and Germany.