Tests Confirm Bird Flu and Wildlife Experts Hope to Expand Surveillance for Migratory Birds

Tests Confirm Bird Flu Found in Scotland
Seatillepi.com
2006 April 6
David Stringer

LONDON -- Britain confirmed its first case of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in a wild swan on Thursday, setting the stage for concerns the disease could spread across the Atlantic.

The swan was found in the Scottish town of Cellardyke, more than 450 miles north of London, according to Scotland's chief veterinary officer, Charles Milne. Health officials said the case poses no serious risks to public health but the government began restricting poultry movement and implementing a 965-square-mile "wild bird risk area" around the site where the infected swan was found.

The deadly virus has not been found in domestic British poultry, although an imported parrot from Suriname died in quarantine from the strain last year.

At least 109 people have died from bird flu since a wave of outbreaks of the H5N1 strain swept through Asian poultry in late 2003, the World Health Organization said Thursday. Virtually all were infected through contact with poultry. Officials said there was less of a risk in Britain where people have minimal contact with birds compared to Asia, and even less in sparsely populated Scotland.

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Wildlife Experts Hope to Expand Hope to Expand Surveillance in H5N1 in Migratory Birds
Canadian Press
2006 April 4 2006
Helen Branswell

TORONTO (CP) - Canadian wildlife experts hope to significantly expand surveillance of migratory birds this year, looking for evidence of whether the worrisome Asian H5N1 avian flu virus has found its way to this continent.

A blueprint for a surveillance plan, which still requires government funding approval, would see twice the number of live birds tested for avian flu viruses compared with last year, with a major focus on birds travelling on flyways from the eastern Arctic to Central and Eastern Canada.

"Due diligence would require that we should be vigilant about the potential arrival of this virus in North America," said Dr. Ted Leighton, executive director of the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre, the lead partner on the surveillance program.

"In my opinion, (it's) far more likely by human agency than by wild birds, but one cannot discount the possibility" that the virus could reach Canada that way, said Leighton, who also teaches at the University of Saskatchewan.

While U.S. political figures have deemed it virtually inevitable that migratory birds will bring the virus to North America, avian flu experts are not so certain. Long-term study suggests there is little intermingling of the viruses carried by birds that travel the Eurasian flyways and those that migrate in the Americas.

But H5N1 has defied flu dogma before, and at this point few experts would be willing to be definitive about what it can and cannot do.

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