Is There An Animal Flu Going Around

Waterfowl and the raptors that dine on them, like this bald eagle and snow goose, have both been killed by the new bird flu virus. Jeff Goulden/Getty Images hide caption

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Jeff Goulden/Getty Images

Waterfowl and the raptors that dine on them, like this bald eagle and snow goose, have both been killed by the new bird flu virus.

Jeff Goulden/Getty Images

A newly arrived bird flu is sweeping through wild bird populations in the United states of america, and that may mean trouble for poultry farmers who have been doing their best to control this flu outbreak in their flocks.

Some 24 million poultry birds like chicken and turkeys accept already been lost, either because they died from the virus or were killed to preclude its spread. But unlike a similar bird flu outbreak seven years agone, this i is unlikely to just burn itself out.

That'due south because this particular influenza virus seems capable of hanging around in populations of wild birds, which can pass the virus on to poultry farms. While chickens and turkeys with the virus chop-chop sicken and dice, some waterfowl tin can remain healthy with the virus and deport it long distances.

Scientists believe that wild migratory birds brought this virus to North America a few months ago. Since and then, more than twoscore wild bird species in more than 30 states have tested positive. This strain of bird flu virus has turned up in everything from crows to pelicans to bald eagles.

"It'due south somewhat surprising how widespread information technology is already in Northward America," says Jonathan Runstadler, an influenza researcher at Tufts University. "Information technology'due south clearly able to persist and transmit from year to year in parts of Asia, Europe, Africa, and I don't think we should be surprised if that's going to be the case here."

As the virus moves across the land, and potentially settles in for the long booty, information technology will encounter new animal species that could get infected. This pathogen will too get a chance to genetically mingle with the influenza viruses that are already circulating in the U.South.

"What that ways for the virus in terms of how information technology evolves, how it changes, we merely don't actually know," says Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children's Inquiry Hospital.

At that place has been only one known human case

And so far, the risk to humans seems low.

But since related bird flu viruses have repeatedly jumped into people in the past, public health experts are watching for whatsoever signs of genetic changes that could brand the virus able to movement into humans.

"We're concerned with whatever avian flu virus that'due south circulating in domestic poultry or wild birds," says Todd Davis, an practiced on animal-to-human being diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "Because humans have no prior immunity to these viruses typically, if they were to be infected and spread the virus to other humans, and then nosotros could have another pandemic virus on our hands."

This virus doesn't take genetic features previously associated with related bird flus that have infected humans. And the but person known to accept contracted this particular bird influenza virus was an elderly person in the United Kingdom who lived in close quarters with ducks; while some of the ducks got sick and died, their possessor never had whatsoever symptoms.

The CDC has been monitoring the wellness of more than 500 people in 25 states who were exposed to infected birds, says Davis. Although a few dozen people did develop influenza-like symptoms, all were tested and none were positive for this virus.

Raptors could be specially hard hitting

Wild animals experts take long known that highly pathogenic bird flus like this 1 were circulating in Europe and Asia. And they have worried most the possible threat these viruses might pose to American birds.

And so, in Dec of 2021, chickens and other fowl got sick and started dying on a farm on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Tests showed this deadly bird flu virus had made it across the Atlantic.

"The very first moment it got to North America, information technology was a heads up to us," says Bryan Richards, the emerging diseases coordinator at the U.S. Geological Survey'southward National Wildlife Health Center.

In January, authorities officials announced its inflow in the U.South. after a wigeon duck in Due south Carolina tested positive. The last time a dangerous bird flu entered the land, Richards says, "the number of instances where we picked that particular virus upward in wild birds was very, very express."

In contrast, this latest bird influenza virus is being detected in ill and dying birds all over.

"This outbreak in the wild bird population is a lot more than extensive than we saw in 2014 and 2015," says David Stallknecht, an avian influenza researcher with the University of Georgia. "Just a lot more than birds announced to exist afflicted."

Waterfowl, and raptors that consume their dead bodies, are bearing the brunt of it.

In Florida, for example, more than ane,000 lesser scaup ducks have succumbed to the virus. In New Hampshire, about 50 Canada geese died in a single upshot. In the Great Plains states, wildlife experts have seen mass die-offs in snow geese.

"In add-on, at that place'due south a host of other species, including black vultures and bald eagles and some of the other scavenging species, that were likely infected by consuming the carcasses of those waterfowl," says Richards.

It remains to exist seen how much of a price this virus will take on American bird species.

In Israel, when this virus hit an expanse where near 40,000 common cranes had gathered for the winter, "they lost a reported 8,000 of these birds over the form of a couple weeks," says Richards. "And so when you get-go thinking near losing 20% of a specific population of wild birds, that's a pretty substantial affect."

Poultry farmers cull their flocks

Chickens and turkeys raised past the poultry industry accept suffered the most deaths, and farmers are bracing themselves for even more than.

The bird influenza that struck in 2014 and 2015 resulted in the deaths of more than than fifty million birds and cost the industry billions of dollars. Dorsum then, the greatest number of cases occurred in the calendar month of Apr.

"So I think I am kind of holding my breath this calendar month," says Denise Heard, director of enquiry programs for the U.South. Poultry & Egg Association.

The virus has a number of ways to go from wild birds into poultry, says Heard. Since the terminal outbreak, the industry has worked to brainwash farmers well-nigh how to protect their flocks.

"Wild migratory waterfowl are always flight over the top and when they poop, that poop gets on the ground," she says, explaining that the virus can then get tracked into bird houses on boots or inadvertently moved from farm to farm on vehicles.

Heard says there currently seems to be less spread of the virus from farm to subcontract than was seen during the last major outbreak. Instead, at that place are more than isolated cases popping up, maybe because wild birds are bringing the viruses to farms and backyard flocks.

If this virus sticks around in wild bird populations — which some scientists recall is probable — poultry farmers may demand to simply learn to live with this problem.

"I hope that this is non the instance. I hope that in the U.Due south. this infection will die off soon, and the virus volition go abroad once more like it did in 2014," says Ron Fouchier, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Heart in holland. "Only there'due south no guarantee for that, as we've seen in Europe now that this virus has remained present for several years in a row."

Since December, farmers in Europe take had to cull more than 17 million birds. "So that'south very like to the situation in the U.S.," says Fouchier. "And nosotros are seeing massive die-offs in wild birds."

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091491202/bird-flu-2022-avian-influenza-poultry-farms

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