# 430
Helen Branswell, our favorite flu correspondent with the Canadian Press, has a good article today on the surveillance of wild and migratory birds across Canada over the past year (2006), looking for the H5N1 Virus.
Canadian wild bird survey for 2006 finds no highly pathogenic avian flu viruses
Helen Branswell, Canadian Press
Published: Friday, February 09, 2007
TORONTO (CP) - A Canadian study that tested more than 12,000 live and dead wild birds for avian influenza viruses turned up no cases of the highly pathogenic Asian strain of H5N1 viruses in 2006, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced Friday.
In fact, initial analysis of viruses from tested birds showed no evidence of any highly pathogenic strains of avian influenza, H5 or otherwise, and none from the families of viruses found in wild birds that travel flyways through Europe and Asia, said Patrick Zimmer, director of policy and administration for the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre.
"So far, they're just what would be expected as far as the normal kind of North American strains that are circulating in these wild birds as a reservoir," Zimmer said from Saskatoon, where the centre is headquartered. The centre conducted the study for the federal, provincial and territorial governments.
The jury is still out over whether the Asian H5N1 viruses causing poultry outbreaks and occasional human deaths through parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa are likely to make their way to North America via wild birds
There is more to this article, so I invite my readers to read the whole thing.
The expected introduction of infected birds from Asia or Africa via the Asian an North Atlantic Flyways hasn't apparently happened yet. Exactly why is unknown. While infected birds, particularly waterfowl, do fly, recent reports indicate they tend to fly less far than their health counterparts. That could play a role.
This lastest finding is likely to fuel the debate over the role of migratory birds in the spread of the virus. In some quarters, human trade in live poultry is seen as the primary culprit, while others look to migratory birds.
Once again, there is much we don't know. But, with studies such as these, we are learning.
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