H5N1 Confirmed in Dead Ducks in France
Recombinomics Commentary
August 14, 2007
Four ducks found dead last week in northeast France had the H5N1 strain of bird flu that can be fatal to humans, officials said on Tuesday.
Two dead swans had already been discovered to have the bird flu in late July at the Diane Capelle pond in the Moselle department, just 10 kilometres from where three other swans were found dead with the virus at the end of June.
The above comments provide additional evidence for endemic H5N1 in Europe. As noted, this is the third outbreak detected in northeastern France over an extended time period. All positives were dead wild birds, which involved swans in the first two outbreaks and ducks in the most recent outbreak.
Over the summer there is little long range migration in France. Similarly, over the same time period there were multiple outbreaks in Germany in the central and southern portion of the country, involving multiple species. The largest was a Kelbra Lake where almost 300 H5N1 positive birds were found. Initially, the vast majority of birds were black necked grebes, but additional species of grebes, swans, and coots have tested positive. The most recent reported positives were dead ducks near Munich. In the Czech Republic, at least one dead swan has also tested positive.
These data strongly support endemic H5N1 in the region. Although FAO just published a five page report on H5N1 in Europe in 2007, the report provided no new information, although the authors suggested the source of the H5N1 in the wild birds was unknown.
However, there is little evidence against endemic H5N1. The wild birds died in the middle of the summer, so the prior hypothesis of open water searches in the dead of winter, which was used to explain the widespread H5N1 in February, 2006 does not apply. Although H5N1 went largely undetected between June 2006 and June 2007, there is little evidence that H5N1 “disappeared” from wild bird population. Most positives before and after the “disappearance” were in resident birds, and reports of H5N1 in domestic poultry has been minimal.
Germany had the largest number of H5N1 wild bird positives in Europe 2006 and 2007, yet in 2006 there was only one reported outbreak in domestic poultry (turkeys in Saxony, far from the vast majority of positive wild birds in Germany) ,and a single duck in 2007, which was a pet. The failure to detect H5N1 in other domestic birds supported infection of the lone domestic duck by wild birds, which were positive in multiple regions over an extended time period in central Germany.
The multiple positives in multiple locations in Germany, France, and the Czech Republic again raises serious questions about H5N1 surveillance systems in neigh boring countries, where endemic H5N1 in wild birds is a near certainty.
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