A tourist walks on the beach while swans swim in water in the Bulgarian Black Sea town of Varna, northeast of the capital Sofia. (Xinhua Photo/Bao Jie)

 
Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BFSA) on Monday reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu.

The virus was confirmed in a duck-breeding farm in the town of Rakovski, some 160 km southeast of Sofia, the agency said in a statement on its website.

All measures have been taken immediately to eradicate the outbreak. In particular, the 5,830 ducks in the farm would be culled, the statement said.

The last outbreak of the disease in Bulgaria was registered in April 2019, the statement said.

According to the statement, outbreaks of the same highly pathogenic influenza H5N8 strain have been registered in Europe since the end of 2019, including 20 in Poland, four in Hungary, three in Slovakia, two in Romania, one in the Czech Republic, and one in Ukraine.