Authorities in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) said on Friday that they have detected the first suspected case of the deadly H5N1 avian influenza on the country's east coast. 

Tara Moriarty, NSW's minister for agriculture, told reporters that preliminary testing of samples taken from a migratory giant petrel that was found sick near the small coastal town of Hawks Nest, 165 km northeast of Sydney, returned a positive result for the highly pathogenic strain.