Bay Fish Pass VHS Tests
Daily Press
1 Jun 2007
B Veale
Area: Upper Michigan, USA
As bad news related to viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) continued to pile up in the Upper Midwest, local Department of Natural Resources officials have good news. Fish tested for the disease from Little Bay de Noc remain healthy, at least for now. “To date, all of the fish we’ve sent in from Little Bay de Noc are negative for VHS,” said Mike Herman, an Escanaba-based DNR fisheries biologist.
The test involves a complicated and expensive process of isolating DNA and RNA and requires five to seven weeks to interpret. The negative test is a rare bright spot. Earlier in May, VHS-positive fish were found in Little Lake Butte des Morts in the Lake Winnebago system in central Wisconsin. Wisconsin DNR officials admitted to finding a VHS-infected brown trout in Lake Michigan near Algoma May 24.
New UW Laboratory Will Further Wildlife Disease Research
High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal
24 May 2007
Area: Wyoming, USA
Wildlife disease research will expand with a new laboratory at the University of Wyoming created in memory of scientists Beth Williams and Tom Thorne, said the father of Beth Williams. The Beth Williams and Tom Thorne Wildlife Research Laboratory was dedicated April, 20 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Williams and Thorne family members, university administration, faculty and staff members, personnel from the Wyoming Fish and Game Department and guests.
Williams was a professor in the Department of Veterinary Sciences in the College of Agriculture, and her husband, Tom, was a retired G&F veterinarian. They were prominent experts on chronic wasting disease and brucellosis. They died in a motor-vehicle crash in December 2004. The facility, in the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory, was established by converting six animal rooms into an infectious diseases lab.
Alberta Outdoors: Chronic Wasting Disease [Editorial]
brooksbulletin.com
30 May 2007
B Scammell
Area: Alberta, Canada
Many Albertans are becoming increasingly concerned over the infection of Alberta deer herds with Chronic Wasting Disease by cross-border hopping infected animals from Saskatchewan. There is outright anger at the sole method we have adopted in Alberta to deal with the situation: huge holocausts of deer in eastern Alberta, then testing the dead animals for the disease. Impetus for the anger was the announcement early in May that an additional nine infected deer were found out of the 1400 collected from the final target area in east central Alberta near Edgerton and Chauvin.
The other area being culled and tested is near Empress. The latest CWD “finds” bring to 29 the number of positive cases of CWD since the first Alberta case found in Sept. 2005. Edgerton is the most westerly location at which CWD has been found in Alberta and, with the Canadian Forces Base at Wainwright and the Wainwright Dunes Ecological Reserve in close proximity, large numbers of deer and elk are at risk if the disease becomes established.
Hantavirus Update 2007 - ProMed Archive Number 20070531.1756
ProMed Mail
30 May 2007
Area: New Mexico, USA
A Taos County woman has died of complications from a hantavirus infection, the state Department of Health says. The 59-year-old woman, who had been treated at the University of New Mexico, is the only person to have been diagnosed with the illness so far this year [2007] in New Mexico. The disease is transmitted by infected rodents -- particularly deer mice -- through urine, droppings or saliva. People contract the disease by breathing in the dried particles infected with the virus.
Early symptoms include fever and muscle aches, possibly with chills, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and a cough. The symptoms develop one to 6 weeks after exposure. There is no specific treatment for hantavirus, but officials said the chances for recovery are better if people get medical attention early.
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