More H5N1 Infected Grebes on Kelbra Lake in Germany
Recombinomics Commentary
July 8, 2007
Most birds ended were found at artificial lake the Kelbra at the border between Thuringia and Saxonia-Anhalt. Here on Sunday again dead animals were in-collected, which are ended at the bird flu probably.
The above translation suggests that grebes continue to die on Kelbra Lake. Yesterday, the H5N1 confirmed birds rose to 153 and media reports indicated over 200 birds had been pulled from the lake. Satellite photos of the lake show that it is small and easily accessed, so the continuing collection suggests grebes are still dying in numbers that exceed initial reports from Qinghai Lake, which is much larger than the small lake formed by the dam.
The increasing number of infected birds provides additional evidence that H5N1 is endemic. Only one domestic bird has been reported as positive, and the negative results for tests on other birds in the area suggests the goose was infected by wild birds. H5N1 has been confirmed at four locations in Thuringen, as well as two in Saxony, and one in Bavaria, in addition to confirmed cases in the Czech Republic and France.
The lab confirmed positives in three countries suggest H5N1 is widespread in Europe, although most countries have failed to detect H5N1 this year. Indeed, all three countries cited above reported H5N1 infections in 2007 for the first time in the past few weeks. The detection in June and July suggest H5N1 is endemic, but is not being detected by the current surveillance programs. The recent positives, like all positives in western Europe, have been from dead or dying birds. The surveillance programs have yet to identify a positive healthy wild bird, even though more than 700 wild birds in Europe were positive in 2006, and the number positive in Germany in the past few weeks is approaching 200, and most of those are from Lake Kelbra.
More information on the sequences from these birds would be useful. H5N1 from birds in neighboring Bavaria and Saxony have been related to birds from Tyva/Mongolia isolates, which included grebe isolates from Tyva.
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