By Samuel McKeith<\/p>\n
SYDNEY, June 20 (Reuters) – Australia will do all it can to curb any spread of H5N1 bird flu, Prime Minister \u200cAnthony Albanese said on Saturday, as the first mainland infection was confirmed \u200cin a seabird a day after being detected in a remote southwestern region.<\/p>\n
Until now, Australia \u200bhas been the only continent without a confirmed mainland case, although the virus was detected in late 2025 on the sub-Antarctic territory of Heard Island, about 4,100 km (2,550 miles) from continental Australia.<\/p>\n
“This is concerning,” Albanese told reporters \u200cin Sydney, adding that his \u2060centre-left government would do “whatever we can to restrict any spread”.<\/p>\n
Testing had confirmed the bird, found sick near Esperance, a \u2060town about 570 km (350 miles) southeast of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, had the deadly strain, the government said.<\/p>\n
Human infections of the virus remain rare, \u200balthough \u200bthe highly pathogenic avian influenza has led \u200bto the culling of hundreds \u200cof millions of birds in the past few years, disrupting food supplies and driving up prices.<\/p>\n
The virus had yet to show up in Australia’s poultry or agriculture, however, said Agriculture Minister Julie Collins, though a giant petrel, another sick bird found in the same area, also tested positive.<\/p>\n
“There’s no \u200cevidence of any mass mortalities and there’s \u200bno evidence that it’s in our poultry \u200bor agriculture system at this \u200bstage,” she added in televised remarks from the capital, \u200cCanberra.<\/p>\n
In its efforts to tackle bird \u200bflu, Australia has tightened \u200bbiosecurity measures at farms, testing shore birds for disease, vaccinating vulnerable species and war-gaming response plans.<\/p>\n
On Friday, authorities had said the migratory \u200bbrown skua, found in \u200cWestern Australia’s Cape Le Grand National Park, tested positive for \u200bthe disease and they were awaiting confirmation.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sam McKeith; Editing \u200bby William Mallard and Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Samuel McKeith SYDNEY, June 20 (Reuters) – Australia will do all it can to curb any spread…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[60722,2840,49,48,78460,84,16420],"class_list":["post-748773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-australia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-h5n1-bird-flu","tag-health","tag-western-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}