Virologist Berndt Klingeborn said in a statement from the Board of Agriculture that the European Union laboratory in Britain had confirmed the presence of the H5N1 virus, “just like we thought."
But the news won’t prompt changes in the measures Sweden has already implemented to prevent the spread of the disease.
"This changes nothing. Wherever we have discovered a case of highly pathogenic H5, we have taken security measures as if it were H5N1," inspector Andrea Ljung of the Board of Agriculture said.
Since late February, Swedish officials have confirmed 29 cases of the H5 subtype of bird flu in Sweden.
Fifteen of these H5 cases have been proven to be a highly pathogenic form of the virus but so far only the two tufted ducks have been confirmed as carriers of the strain of H5N1 that can kill humans.
All of the dead birds have been found along the Scandinavian country's south-eastern coast, or off the coast on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland. No cases have been reported in domestic fowl.
H5N1 probably in Afghanistan
Meanwhile Afghan authorities said tests had shown it was 99 percent certain that the H5N1 strain of bird flu is present in Afghanistan.
The final results of tests, taken from poultry samples and sent to a laboratory in Rome, were expected Thursday but officials in the country aren’t expecting evidence to the contrary.
“There is a good possibility that the results are 100 percent positive for H5N1," a high-ranking public health ministry official said.
The samples were taken from birds in the capital and the eastern city of Jalalabad near Pakistan, where the H5 virus was detected last month.
H5N1 has killed nearly 100 people worldwide over the past couple of years and is spreading.