The first suspected case of a deadly strain of bird flu that has killed millions of birds and mammals worldwide has been found in Western Australia, the federal government has confirmed.<\/p>\n
The highly pathogenic avian influenza, known as H5, has devastated populations of seabirds, seals and other animals across the world.<\/p>\n
If confirmed, the WA case would mark the first confirmation of the virus on mainland Australia.<\/p>\n
Australia is the last continent in the world without a confirmed case.<\/p>\n
On Friday afternoon, Federal Agricultural Minister Julie Collins said the WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development was investigating.<\/p>\n
“[The suspected case is] in a single migratory wild bird that was found sick in an isolated area in southern Western Australia,” she said.<\/p>\n
“The initial testing at the Western Australian laboratory has returned a suspected positive result for avian influenza.”<\/p>\n
Collins said samples had been sent to CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness.<\/p>\n
She said the results were expected on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“We cannot confirm yet whether it is the strain of concern that is circulating, at this stage, known as the H5 bird flu,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There is no evidence of mass mortality at this time, nor is there any evidence of any infection in poultry.”<\/p>\n
Collins said Western Australia would coordinate a response, with the national coordination to be led by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.<\/p>\n
Keep ‘safe distance’ from sick birds<\/p>\n
The minister asked Australians not to touch sick or dead birds or animals.<\/p>\n
“If you see multiple sick or dead birds or other animals. Please take photos or record it from a safe distance,” Collins said.<\/p>\n
“Record your location and go to birdflu.gov.au to report it.”<\/p>\n
She said Australia had been preparing for the H5 strain for some time.<\/p>\n
“If it is confirmed to be the H5 bird flu, this will be sobering but not unexpected given the spread globally,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I want to reassure the public that we’re well placed to respond to and to manage this situation.”<\/p>\n
The Australian government has called together a meeting of the states and territories and industry experts to discuss the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first suspected case of a deadly strain of bird flu that has killed millions of birds and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-485095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}