Samantha Donovan:\u00a0The Federal Government has declared there is now local transmission of the devastating H5 strain of bird flu in Australia. The determination comes after testing by the CSIRO. Eleven Greater Crested Terns in South Australia are now suspected to have the virus. No cases have yet been found in poultry or agriculture and authorities say the risk to human health remains low. Alexandra Humphries has more.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: Authorities believe the incursion of bird flu into the country has taken a significant step forward. Agriculture Minister Julie Collins has confirmed the virus is now spreading in Australia.<\/p>\n
Julie Collins: I can advise that today the Consultative Committee on Emergency Animal Diseases met and has agreed based on testing and sequencing by the CSIRO lab that some local transmission has occurred between a number of Greater Crested Terns that are resident in South Australia.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: It comes after 11 new suspected cases of H5 bird flu were detected in South Australia, all in Greater Crested Terns.<\/p>\n
Julie Collins: While there remains no evidence of any mass mortalities at this point in time, we do expect with this local transmission that there will be further detections in Australian wildlife.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: Australian Chief Veterinary Officer Dr Beth Cookson explains the determination is based on genetic sequencing.<\/p>\n
Beth Cookson: Which shows that whilst all strains are still related to the sub-Antarctic strains, that the virus detected in these Greater Crested Terns are closely related.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: There have been 27 confirmed detections of H5 bird flu in Australia so far.<\/p>\n
Beth Cookson: We do know from the overseas experience that once the virus becomes more widespread in wild bird populations it will not be possible to avoid losses in susceptible wildlife in the natural environment.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: Clare Scriven is South Australia’s Primary Industries Minister.<\/p>\n
Clare Scriven: So what we’ve seen around the world is that we can’t stop H5 bird flu and there has of course around the world in every other continent been local transmission. So it was pretty much inevitable that it would occur.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: The virus has not yet been detected in the poultry industry, but there are management plans ready to go if that happens.<\/p>\n
Clare Scriven: The only way if it does become into poultry is to unfortunately kill those birds. They have all of that in place. Obviously it’s not a good outcome, but most of those birds according to my advice would die from H5 bird flu anyway.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: Simon Maddocks is the Chair of Primary Producers South Australia. He says farmers are doing what they can to prepare for the worst.<\/p>\n
Simon Maddocks: There are broad consequences and repercussions, but for the commercial poultry industry they’ll be actively pursuing everything in their power to minimise infection and transmission.<\/p>\n
Wayne Boardman: I think it’s a very significant development.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: Wayne Boardman is an Associate Professor in Wildlife Health at Adelaide University and a wildlife vet.<\/p>\n
Wayne Boardman: It’s likely we’re going to get it in other birds over the next few days, over the next few weeks. What is my biggest concern is that it might well then go into the Australian sea lions in the next week or so.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: Seven of the eleven new suspected cases were detected in South Australia’s southeast and four on Kangaroo Island. One of those was found near a significant sea lion colony at Seal Bay. Tours of the beach at Seal Bay will be temporarily paused in an effort to protect the animals.<\/p>\n
James Johnston: I think this moves the bird flu crisis into a new phase where if it really gets into those colonies it could be absolutely devastating.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: James Johnston is a Senior Advocate at the Invasive Species Council, which is calling for urgent investment to improve the resilience of wildlife.<\/p>\n
James Johnston: We’ve seen cases around the world where seal populations, 95% of seal populations, were devastated in South America. This could be absolutely devastating to South Australia’s environment.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Humphries: Dr Michelle Wille is a bird flu expert at the University of Melbourne and an outreach coordinator with the World Health Organisation. She says local transmission is a significant development.<\/p>\n
Michelle Wille: The best case is that we are extremely lucky and it becomes self-limiting in turns and it goes away. I think the likelihood for that is probably quite low but we can always hope. I think the worst case is that we see what we saw in other parts of the world. For example, in South America, they lost almost 40% of the Peruvian pelicans in the country of Peru. They lost more than about 20% of the South American sea lions in the whole continent of South America and it really was quite devastating for the wildlife there.<\/p>\n
Samantha Donovan: Dr Michelle Wille from the University of Melbourne. Alexandra Humphries with that report.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Samantha Donovan:\u00a0The Federal Government has declared there is now local transmission of the devastating H5 strain of bird…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[6634,64,63,1845,2929,8112,137,3755,51235,338],"class_list":["post-831178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-agriculture","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bird-flu","tag-conservation","tag-disease","tag-health","tag-podcast","tag-poultry","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}