German scientists have discovered that the bird-flu virus which has killed a number of swans in southern Germany shares a common origin with an outbreak in a Czech poultry farm, local reports said Thursday.

"We assume infected wild birds infected both the Czech poultry and the water fowl in Germany," The German Press Agency (DPA) quoted Elke Reinking, spokeswoman of the Freidrich Loeffler Animal Health Institute (FLI), as saying.

A DNA study showed a 99.2 percent match between the bird flu outbreak in the Czech Republic and the virus found in dead swans in the southern German city of Nuremberg, she said.

A total of nine cases of bird flu have been discovered in Germany since last week. Preliminary tests confirmed that they were infected with the deadly H5N1 virus.

The H5N1 bird flu virus, which experts fear could transmute into deadly human influenza, has also been found in geese and turkeys in farms in Hungary, Britain and the Czech Republic this year.

According to the World Health Organization, the H5N1 virus has killed nearly 200 people out of more than 300 cases globally since 2003.

Source: Xinhua