Another giant petrel found dead on a WA beach has been confirmed as the State’s eighth case of H5 bird flu.

Testing at CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness this week upgraded the detection of suspected bird flu to “presumed positive” in a dead giant petrel found at Lancelin Beach, north of Perth.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development said that even though testing was unable to fully determine the specific H5 bird flu strain — likely due to the poor quality of the sample taken from a decomposed carcass — it would be treated as a positive case.

Another dead giant petrel found at Parry Beach in Denmark, on WA’s south coast, has also tested positive for the H5 virus.

Testing continues but it is likely to be recorded as a presumed positive detection, unable to be formally confirmed due to carcass degradation.

It comes as avian influenza spreads across the ditch - with New Zealand reporting its first case of the deadly H5N1 bird flu after a migratory seabird found on a beach near Wellington tested positive.

“We are incredibly worried about New Zealand’s biodiversity because our birds have never had to deal with anything like this before,” Brett Gartrell, professor of wildlife health at Massey University, said.

The case in the brown skua seabird comes after the virus was first detected in June in Australia, the last continent to report the virus.

More than 1700 wildlife reports have been made to the hotline from WA since the first confirmed case on June 19.

Of those, 273 reports have been assessed for further investigation or testing. A total of 117 negative test results have been recorded across WA.

While the risk to human health remains low, DPIRD has urged people to avoid handling animals and to record their observations by photo or video to report to the hotline.

Australian Chief Veterinary Officer Beth Cookson said there had been 14 confirmed or presumed positive detections of H5 bird flu across the nation.

“All of these have been individual wild seabirds found in coastal locations. All but one have been wild migratory seabirds,” Dr Cookson said.

“There remains no evidence of any mass mortality events and there are no detections in poultry or in our agricultural production system. The risk to human health remains low.”