Dead Crows & Potential Avian Flu

Recombinomics Commentary
February 19, 2006

 

"...Many countries reported Newcastle disease outbreaks, which are frequently cited in countries that subsequently become H5N1 positive.  This linkage goes back to H5N1 in Indonesia and China in 2003 and 2004 and continues to the present.  Many countries in the Middle East have also reported recent Newcastle Disease outbreaks, as has India.

If H5N1 was present in northern Siberia in the summer, it was probably also present in North America because of the connection via the East Atlantic Flyway. 

Canada did widespread testing on young ducks captured in August of 2005.  The ducks were swabbed as part of the banding experiments and H5 was detected in all reporting Provinces.  Although H5N1, H5N2, H5N3, and H5N9 were detected, all reported characterizations were of LPAI. 

 

Crows also have their admirers
Lack of regular visit prompts question
Saturday, September 03, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

Through responses to this column, I've come to know that members of the corvid family - especially crows - are the subject of much interest and attention for many people.

Although the appearance of West Nile Virus has brought them farther into the spotlight, they have been noticed for their cunning, intelligence and mischief-making for decades. As the "Birds of North America" states, "Everybody knows crows. It is a mistake to underestimate a crow's ability. Most people have opinions about crows that run the gamut from outright hatred to bemused admiration."

A few people - obvious admirers - have told me they put food out for crows, as they put seed out for other birds. Recently I received an e-mail from Joanne Currier of Salisbury Cove, who had a question about a group of crows she had been feeding for more than three years.

"They used to visit our yard almost daily, year round, in groups of three to five birds. Last winter, we had two groups of four. Things were fine this year until after breeding season. ...

"Suddenly, they stopped visiting our yard. I hear crows around, and they land in trees nearby, but they do not land in our yard for food...one thing I have observed, though, is that since 'our' crows stopped visiting our yard, I don't see as many crows around the island either. Could something have happened to the entire crow population in our area?"

Paramount in Joanne's mind was West Nile Virus. She had commented she hadn't heard or read anything about it this year. I did some researching on the Web, but did not come up with anything conclusive.

I visited Audubon's site on WNV and read what's become common knowledge since the virus first appeared: corvids seem to be particularly susceptible to it, dying within one to two weeks of contracting it; tens of thousands of dead crows studied have been found to have died of this disease.

I then checked out the Maine Bureau of Health Web site. Its avian testing results for 2005, as of Aug. 31, listed four crows testing positive, all collected in York County. Of course, this only takes into account the birds that were found and brought in to be tested; it would be impossible to say how many might have gone undetected, if any.

I next wondered if Joanne knew, for sure, that it was indeed the same family of crows she had been observing year after year. A breeding pair with young will often be accompanied by offspring from previous years, which help their parents feed and care for the newbies. These small family groups will stay together until winter, when they join large roosts of crows that have come from many different locations. The crows in these roosts will often travel miles in search of food. It's possible the crows that had visited Joanne's yard in winter were strangers - transients. Short of banding the birds (which can only be done by someone who has a permit and a license), there is no way to tell for sure.

It's also plausible the crows have found an abundant food source elsewhere, and just aren't congregating nearby as much as they had in the past. That's not to say that WNV couldn't have had something to do their disappearance. But my thought is this: crows are common and fairly obvious, and Mount Desert Island is a well-known travel destination for many visitors. If a large population of crows there had died, someone, somewhere, would have noticed some dead birds.

In the absence of data so far on the presence of WNV in local crow populations, I would hazard to guess that they have either dispersed to other locations, or, possibly, are undergoing a natural population fluctuation due to other factors.

I'm not aware of any detailed studies of the crow population on Mount Desert Island, so this is only an educated guess. Thank you for that thought-provoking question, Joanne!

NEWS bird columnist Chris Corio can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net

 

Here it is again

 

Your local health department can get kits here.
 
http://www.synbiotics.com/News/Press_Releases.html

Synbiotics Corporation launches FLU DETECT™ Antigen Capture Test Strips 
 March 16, 2005- Synbiotics Corporation, the preferred resource for animal owners and professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of animals is pleased to announce the launch of FLU DETECT™ Antigen Capture Test Strip Kit which was uniquely designed for veterinary use. The product, launched at VIV Asia, Bangkok, Thailand, detects all 15 H sub-types of Type A Flu. The product can be used farm side or in the laboratory for the detection of Type A Flu including H5N1, with higher sensitivity and specificity than similar products; most of which have been developed for human use.

The FLU DETECT™ Antigen Capture Test Strip Kit is an in vitro rapid assay for the surveillance of Avian Influenza Virus. This test utilizes immunochromatographic technology. A positive test result appears within 15 minutes.

Bird flu has caused severe economic losses to the Southeast Asia poultry industry. This technology helps farmers, veterinarians, public health workers and government officials to rapidly implement proper control measures, manage disease, and ultimately reduce the economic loss associated with this disease.

SYNBIOTICS Corporation will market this in certain Asian and European countries immediately and will make the product available globally once the respective government approvals are granted including in the United States upon USDA licensure.

SYNBIOTICS Corporation develops, manufactures and markets veterinary diagnostics, instrumentation and related products for the companion animal, large animal and poultry markets worldwide. For more information on SYNBIOTICS Corporation and its products, visit the company website at www.synbiotics.com.
________

Contact :

Louis N. Vernon
Area Manager-Asia
Tel : +1 858 451 3771 (ext 1101)
Email: louisv@synbiotics.com

Brenda Glidewell
Global Technical Director-Poultry
Tel : +1 858 451-3771 (ext 1803)
Email : brendag@synbiotics.com

 

 

http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/subjects/en/health/diseases-cards/migrationmap.html and notice the flight pattern around Alaska.   Does it look like we will be getting much reporting out of that state? 

 

 

 

 

 

Meetings & Conferences

 

State Summits ·                     March 27 Boise, ID ·                     March 27 Austin, TX ·                     March 28 Albuquerque, NM ·                     March 29 Oklahoma City, OK ·                     March 30 Portland, OR ·                     March 30 Los Angeles, CA ·                     April 10 Nashville, TN ·                     April 13 Anchorage, AK ·                     April 14 Tacoma, WA

"Worldwide, there are many strains of avian influenza virus that can be spread by migratory fowl. These viruses can cause varying degrees of illness in poultry."

"The spread of a highly pathogenic avian H5N1 virus across eastern Asia and into Europe represents a significant threat, with health professionals concerned about a potential human pandemic. This virus has passed from infected poultry to humans and other mammals, and has had devastating impacts on poultry farming in several nations."

·                     Avian Influenza (PDF) (409KB) (U.S. Geological Survey)
Find in-depth information on avian influenza in the USGS Field Manual of Wildlife Diseases.

http://pandemicflu.gov/issues/

Under Birds and Animal Issues

 

I can’t make Austin, TX hope you can make Portland, OR

I find it interesting they don’t post any location or registration information? I’ll keep looking, dial-up is SLOW!

 

 

I got the flu 2 months ago in Southern California.  I am still having

 

 

Kathy,

    The above link has info about testing in our state and basically they said they would have results for you in a matter of hours.  I don't do any of the out of state testings or not.    I put the above link, to show my source, but I will paste the information in here as well:

If avian flu strikes humans in the United States, the effects could be devastating. Officials in Washington estimate the economic impact alone could reach $600 billion, not to mention the two million American deaths an outbreak could cause. Scientists say the current outbreak of avian influenza is the most severe on record. Unprecedented numbers of birds have died from the disease in several countries around the world. So far, there is no evidence that the most deadly of bird flu strains, known as H5N1, has entered the United States. But officials are still planning for when, and if, that happens. Four-hundred South Dakota leaders gathered at a pandemic flu summit in Sioux Falls earlier this month. The main message at the conference was clear. Hope is not a strategy of defense, and preparation must begin at the local level. “The time to prepare is now, that preparedness really pays off, and that preparedness is not a spectator sport and it really takes the participation of everyone in the community to result in the kind of seamless reaction that we need,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers For Disease Control, at the summit. So, the front line in the battle against bird flu has wound up at a local institution of higher education: South Dakota State University. If a dangerous strain of avian influenza makes its way to South Dakota, researchers there will be the first to know. “Within the state, as far as avian influenza on birds, we would be the only ones doing that testing,” said Jane Christopher-Hennings with SDSU. Researchers at SDSU take swabs of genetic material from birds, and examine them to see if there's any trace of H5N1. It's a several-step process that involves making tiny copies of genetic structures. “Basically what that is, is an enzymatic reaction that will take the DNA, or in this case RNA, and amplify it so it could be detected,” Christopher-Hennings said. The tests can be completed in a matter of hours, and that's something State Veterinarian Sam Holland says gives South Dakota an edge in detecting the disease. “Right now, we've got avian influenza, not in the United States but in certain parts of the globe, H5N1 influenza in birds that has rarely transmitted to people,” Holland said. Holland says the danger lies in the possibility that the bird virus could mutate more, so it could be passed from human to human. And because humans won't have any immunity to the disease, it could spark a world-wide outbreak. “We want to do surveillance and find it day one, and nip it in the bud, if it's a serious virus involving poultry,” Holland said. “We don't know that it will be passed from person to person, but like any influenza it is what we call, genetically-mobile, meaning it can change quite a bit with its genetics,” Christopher-Hennings said. Many of SDSU’s samples are provided by Game Fish and Parks offices across South Dakota. Department Secretary John Cooper says having a local testing site that's watching for the most dangerous strain of avian flu is crucial. “This is like handling evidence, really. The more people who handle the birds, the more chances there are for mistakes. By being able to go directly from Game, Fish and Parks over to the lab in Brookings, we eliminate the chances for problems and mistakes,” Cooper said. All of the test results are stored on a computer and carefully monitored. Any trace of H5N1 would be immediately reported to state officials and the Centers for Disease Control so quick action could be taken to stop it from spreading. “There's no reason to panic, it’s about being prepared in case something would happen,” Cooper said. And SDSU is playing an important role in that process, by being a local line of defense in a growing, global concern. Here are several websites with more information: South Dakota State University Centers For Disease Control United States Department of Agriculture South Dakota Department of Health Pandemic Flu Plan Preparing Your Family For A Pandemic Matt Belanger © 2006 KELOLAND TV. All Rights Reserved.

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Information on Pandemic Planning for United States

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/usamap.html#

 

I visted California and Oregon and it seems the planning is in Process 

 

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/states/oregon.html
The state of Oregon, HHS and other federal agencies will hold a pandemic planning summit on March 30, 2006, with public health and emergency management and response leaders within the state. 

 

TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 2006
 
 
NEW YORK: Dr. David Nabarro, chief avian flu coordinator for the United Nations, has become gun-shy about making predictions - in particular, about if and when the H5N1 virus, now devastating bird populations around the world, will do the same to humans.
 
But Nabarro describes himself as "quite scared," especially since the disease has broken out of Eastern Asia and reached birds in Africa, Europe and India much faster than he expected it to.
 
"That rampant, explosive spread," he said, "and the dramatic way it's killing poultry so rapidly suggests that we've got a very beastly virus in our midst."
 
Nabarro, the former chief of crisis response for the World Health Organization, admits that he has been accused before of being an alarmist.
 
On his first day in his current job, he was quoted as saying that the avian flu could kill 150 million people.
 
In December 2004, when he was in charge of the health organization's response to the Indian Ocean tsunami, he warned that if help did not arrive quickly, cholera and malaria could kill twice as many people as the waves had just swept away.
 
In Darfur the same year, he said that 10,000 people a month were dying in refugee camps because the Sudanese government was rebuffing aid.
 
Earlier in 2004, he warned that Israeli roadblocks were endangering Palestinians who needed drugs for diabetes and high blood pressure.
 
Asked to reflect on those warnings, he answers: About Darfur, he was dead right; on the Palestinians, he was also right, but massive infusions of aid kept death rates down; and on the tsunami, he said, he made his dire forecast when only 40,000 people were believed dead, and the world's abundant generosity paid for the clean water and mosquito control that prevented the worst from coming true.
 
On avian flu, he notes, he predicted a range of 5 million to 150 million deaths - the same range the World Bank was using - but headline writers quoted only the higher figure. And how many does Nabarro now say could die? "I don't know," he said. "Nobody knows."
 
But he repeatedly said that he is more scared than he was when he took the job in September. In October, he predicted that the virus would reach Africa, where surveillance is so poor that deaths of chickens or humans could easily go undiagnosed for weeks. Last month, he was proved right.
 
The infection of millions more birds in many more countries "has led to an exponential increase of the load of virus in the world," he said. And influenza is a fast-mutating virus. Each infected bird and person is actually awash in minutely different strains, and it takes lengthy genetic testing to sequence each one - so if a pandemic strain were to appear, "it might be quite difficult for us to pick up that change when it happens."
 
To skeptics who doubt that the H5N1 strain will become a threat to humans because it has existed for 10 years without doing so, he counters that it had the same 10 years to move out of Southeast Asia, but it did not until last year, when it shot across half the globe.
 
The skepticism reminds him of his stint in East Africa in the 1980s. No one realized then how widespread the AIDS virus was, and it was unclear then whether it was transmitted by sex. Some experts argued that sex was such an inefficient method of disease transmission that it would never be much of a threat. It has now killed 20 million people and 40 million more are infected.
 
"We failed to give it the proper focus, right at the beginning," he said.
 
Like early AIDS, he said, avian flu has too many unanswered questions, like: Why did the disease, after years of smoldering in poultry, suddenly start hitchhiking in migratory birds? Why does the northern China strain - the one now spreading westward - cause so many false negatives in diagnostic tests? Why did so many people fall sick so quickly in Turkey?
 
"Bits of the puzzle are missing," he said. "In six months, will we be cursing ourselves for missing some key phenomena now?"
 
He said he fears that the virus will soon be endemic in birds everywhere, rendering containment fruitless and condemning the world to mounting a perpetual vigil for human outbreaks. Its movement into cats frightens him even more because humans routinely curl up with them.
 
Mutations making it less lethal to humans may, paradoxically, be bad news, he said. A disease that kills half of those it infects often burns out before it reaches new victims, while one that leaves 98 percent of its victims alive, as the 1918 flu did, rapidly reaches hundreds of millions because it has so many carriers.
 
As a public-health bureaucrat, the 56- year-old British doctor wants to come across as "honest, accurate, down-to- earth, someone who can translate complex facts in a way that makes emotional sense to those receiving them."
 
Still, there is something about his voice. Experience has made him wary of misquotation, so he chooses his words as carefully as a surgeon picks through his tray of instruments. But his enunciation is chilling - reminiscent of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, describing with slow, awful precision how a body was mutilated.
 
Even his lighthearted similes come across that way. An Oxford graduate and son of a prominent doctor, he knows the value of a yard chicken because he has worked in Nepal, northern Iraq and East Africa fighting malaria and malnutrition.
 
Each bird that lays eggs until it ends up in the pot, he said, "is a short-term savings account with a high rate of growth and a yield that no bank can match."
 
Culling ruins Third World farmers the same way canceling Social Security would devastate the American working class. It forces the poor to hide their flocks and thus protect the virus.
 
Nabarro rejects the word "gloomy" as a description of his outlook, but if he were an oncologist, his patients would flee.
 
He works out of rented UN offices in the Chrysler Building in New York and spends much of his time traveling. But that will end abruptly if the disease starts spreading to humans. There will be, he predicted, a "period of wonderment," while the authorities figure out whether the first cases are real, then borders will close, airports will shut down and travelers everywhere will be stranded.
 
"Assuming I'm here, I'll just camp down, probably in the Secretariat, and stay there for 6 to 10 weeks," he said referring to the UN headquarters.
 
That means he will not be with his wife and five children, who are in Switzerland, where he was posted with the health organization, or in college in England. He has not stockpiled Tamiflu, the antivirus drug, for them or for himself, he said, although he does carry a box of it to show at meetings. They, too, will have to hunker down where they are.
 
"But they know the job I'm doing," he said. "They see me as I'm plotting the virus on maps."
 
The one aspect of his job that makes him more optimistic is that the world is waking up to the threat of bird flu. In January, Nabarro went to a summit in Beijing hoping to raise $1.2 billion for the fight. He got $1.9 billion. Still, that is just a beginning, he said.
 
"We spend billions to protect ourselves from threats that may not exist, from missiles, bombs and human combatants," he said. "But pathogens from the animal kingdom are something against which we are appallingly badly protected, and our investment in pandemic insurance is minute." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the bluebird of happiness

 

 

 

You are correct in your impression/assumption...but, I for one, never understood why experts thought that crows and vultures could not contract it..they are birds, after all.   ???  I believe that a good number of us, probably had the same ideas..and wondered why crows and vultures were once thought not to be able to get it..but then again..they also thought that pigeons couldn't get it either..and they have..sooooooo. 

 

Lots of great information here.. It won't take you long to know everything that we know.  Take care.  Peace.   

I think this is where they got the "10%" number:

 

According to this article from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Newsroom entitled "Deadly bird flu not in Alaska, yet ": "Thirty of the 290 samples tested positive for various bird flu viruses, but none of the viral isolation and subtyping to date has detected H5N1."

 

It's sorta like that kid's game Post Office, but a little more frightening when we're talking bird flu.

 

Article is here:

 

NM