H5N1 Confirmed in Hong Kong Egret
Recombinomics Commentary
November 24, 2007
Laboratory tests confirmed the bird, found last Sunday in a park in the New Territories area, was infected with the killer strain, authorities said.
The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department warned in a statement of personal contact with wild birds and live poultry.
More than a dozen wild birds have been discovered sick or dead in Hong Kong this year with H5N1, which has killed more than 200 people and ravaged poultry flocks worldwide since 2003.
Migratory birds have been blamed for the global spread of the disease.
Biologists believe local species of wild birds found dead with the virus could have picked it up from contact with infected flocks in nearby mainland China, where it is believed the strain first mutated into a form deadly to humans.
The above comments confirm H5N1 in an egret in Hong Kong and add local comment on the origin. H5N1 kills wild birds in Hong Kong each year, although the positive this year is slightly ahead of January detections in 2006 and 2007. The January outbreaks are typically blamed on release of birds during religious ceremonies, but since the H5N1 was a bit earlier this season, the focus has shifted to domestic poultry in China.
The transport and transmission of H5N1 in Hong Kong is due to migratory birds, although new outbreaks lead to some “wild birds as victims” spin, to discount the obvious. The natural reservoir for avian influenza is wild waterfowl which can be asymptomatically infected with a wide range of serotypes, including all four major clades of H5N1 (Clade 1 in southeast Asia, clade 2.1 in Indonesia, clade 2.2 in all countries west of China, and clade 2.3 in China, spreading into southeast Asia.
The H5N1 in Hong Kong this season will almost certainly be clade 2.3 (Fujian strain), which was identified in January, 2006 and January, 2007.
Migration is also leading to reported outbreaks in Vietnam, Mayanmar, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Krasnodar, and England.
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