Argentina this week And Uruguay has declared a national health emergency following an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1, a fast-moving virus that destroys poultry flocks and wild birds. This brings the 10 countries in South America to recent records of their first encounters with the virus, including Peru, which killed more than 50,000 wild birds last fall and more than 600 sea lions in January. Combine the sea lion’s infection with the fact that H5N1 flu invaded his Spanish mink farm in October, and health officials face the possibility that the unpredictable virus has adapted to threaten other species. Have to.
To be clear, this doesn’t include people yet. There have been confirmed outbreaks of bird flu that can infect humans in the last few decades, but only in the last 12 months were confirmed in an adult in Colorado last May and her in Ecuador in January last year. She is the only 2 cases in a 9-year-old girl. (Neither of them died.) And there is still no evidence that the virus passed from newly infected mammals to humans. shows a disturbing trend.
At least 60 countries have recently experienced outbreaks of H5N1, according to the World Organization for Animal Health. H5N1 is named after two of her proteins found on the surface of the virus. This includes the United States, where 43 million egg-laying hens died from bird flu last year or were slaughtered to prevent the spread of the disease. These losses resulted in the loss of nearly one-third of the nation’s egg-laying flock. They have slashed their egg supply so much that prices at the end of the year are 210% higher than they were at the end of 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Overall, the USDA estimates his just under 58 million birds. Backyard poultry dead or killed in 2022, half a million more dead so far this year.
The poultry industry is huge. The U.S. portion alone includes more than 9 billion edible chickens and he 216 million turkeys and he 325 million laying hens each year. Chicken is the most consumed meat in the world. At this scale, it is difficult to put losses from avian flu into context. But the ongoing epidemic has become the worst animal disease outbreak in US history and the largest poultry outbreak recorded in the UK, Europe and Japan. said the damage was devastating.
There may be little you can do to protect wild birds. Avian influenza is spread by seasonally migrating waterfowl that carry the virus unharmed. However, the poultry industry has been forced into a complex set of behavioral and building functions, broadly called biosecurity, developed or reinforced after a devastating pandemic that claimed the lives of more than 50 million birds in 2015. depends. Ask if biosecurity can be strengthened enough to eliminate bird flu, and if not, what must be changed to keep birds and humans safe.
“We know biosecurity works, but it’s a heroic undertaking, and given the current style of building and the current workforce, it may not be sustainable,” says a veterinarian in Minnesota. says Carol Cardona, professor of bird health at the university. veterinary medicine. “The reason I say it works is [highly pathogenic avian flu] In 2015 there were fewer cases in 2022. So they learned some lessons and changed some things, but very few completely prevented it. ”
The constant attack of H5N1 is not only important for poultry and wildlife, but also for people. Bird flu has long been considered the animal disease most likely to evolve into a global human pandemic, and even after the onslaught of SARS-CoV-2, many scientists are still That’s how I feel.
