.
Bulgaria Confirms H5 in a Swan
Recombinomics Commentary
February 4, 2006
"Our teams found a wild swan in the Danube river near the town of Vidin - the tests on the swan showed it was infected with the H5 virus," Agriculture Minister Nihat Kabil told a news conference.
The detection of H5 in a swan in Bulgaria is not a surprise. H5N1 has been isolated from swans in Mongolia and the Volga Delta and H5N1 has been reported in swans in Romania and Croatia. The H5 will almost certainly type as H5N1.
It is somewhat surprising that it has taken this long to detect H5N1 in Bulgaria. Media reports indicate 7000 birds had been sampled previously. Since there have been swans dying of H5N1 in the area since August, it is surprising that H5N1 was not detected earlier. 7000 negatives raises questions about surveillance selection of the testing procedure itself.
The number of countries that have failed to detect H5N1 is alarmingly high. These failures point toward serious flaws in the surveillance systems. In the Middle East, the failures to report are particularly acute because of the human cases now being reported and the endemic nature of the H5N1 in wild birds and poultry.
H5N1 has been present throughout the region since October, and the fall migration from Europe to Africa would have spread H5N1 far and wide across the major migratory routes through the Middle East. The H5N1 trail of bird migrating south will be overlaid soon by H5N1 in birds migrating north, leading to more dual infections and more recombination.
Iraq just filed an OIE report on H5 in birds. They were the first country in the Middle east to do so. The H5N1 in Bulgaria and Cyprus may lead more neighboring countries such as Greece to admit there is H5N1 present, but the current lack of transparency in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are cause for concern.
Map
Media Resources