Uva Lake H5N1 in Mute Swans in England
Recombinomics Commentary 00:02
January 12, 2008
The strain of deadly flu found in three mute swans at Abbotsbury, Devon, is a close match to the one that infected wild birds in the Czech Republic last summer.
The above comment confirms that the H5N1 in the mute swans in southern England (see satellite map) is the Uva Lake strain. Since the sequence us being compared to the Czech sequence, it seems likely that the recent H5N1 sequence in southern England doesn’t match the Suffolk sequences, confirming that the outbreaks in England were due to independent introductions of the Uva Lake strain by wild birds.
Since Weybridge has not released the most closely related sequences from the Czech Republic and Kuwait, the exact series of relationships is not completely clear. Prior announcements indicated the Czech Republic sequence had 99.5% identity with the Kuwait sequence and 99.2% identity with the Nuremberg sequence. The Neuremberg sequence, as well as two additional sequences from Germany (Frohberg and Thuringen) have been published, and clearly link back to the Uva Lake strain, which has become dominant throughout Europe in 2007. Others have released Uva Lake sequences from the Krasnodar outbreak in September, and the Romanian outbreak in November, but Weybridge is still hoarding the Kuwait sequences collected almost a year ago.
Release of the hoarded sequences would be useful, so the paths of Uva Lake H5N1 in Europe can be independently analyzed.
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