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  PlanetArk 17 Feb 06
Swans Not Big Culprit in Spread of Bird Flu in EU
Story by Anna Mudeva

AMSTERDAM - Most of the European Union's known cases of bird flu have been in swans - but they are not the species most guilty of spreading the deadly H5N1 virus around the continent, a leading scientist said on Thursday.

Dr Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, told Reuters the pattern of the outbreaks of the disease in four EU countries in the last few days showed other infected wild birds were to blame.

Most of the cases of H5N1, which can kill humans in its highly pathogenic form, confirmed so far in Germany, Italy, Austria and Greece have been in dead swans. Germany also found the strain in a hawk.

"Swans are highly susceptible to the virus - they drop dead. There are other birds which get infected but they do not become sick and they can spread the disease," said Osterhaus, a chairman of the European scientific working group on influenza.

"Swans fly not more than 50 km (30 miles) a day. But looking at the way the disease has spread - one day it's in Italy, a day later it's in the north of Germany - that makes us believe that there are other bird species spreading the disease."

He said a team of Dutch scientists were carrying out experiments to find out which birds got infected with H5N1 and what their susceptibility to the virus was.

Transmission of H5N1 to domestic flocks could devastate the EU's 20 billion euro ($24 billion) poultry and egg industry, and many governments have ordered chickens to be kept indoors to prevent contact with wild birds.

WILD DUCKS

The Netherlands had an outbreak of a different strain of bird flu in 2003 that led to the culling of 30 million birds, more than a third of the country's total.

Osterhaus and colleagues said in a study last year that wild ducks, especially mallards, carried more than a half-dozen different types of avian flu virus and could be used to track and predict outbreaks.

The researchers said their study confirmed the conventional wisdom that wild birds carry the relatively harmless viruses that eventually mutate into highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Scientists have suggested that migratory birds play an important role in the spread of the bird flu virus.

H5N1, which originated in Asia, has killed over 90 people there as well as in Turkey and prompted culls of millions of chickens.

Osterhaus said cats were also vulnerable to bird flu and could catch the disease by eating infected wild birds. "We know for sure that cats can get infected, dogs possibly too," he said, adding it was not clear whether other animals were at risk.
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