A walrus who was discovered lifeless on a Norwegian Arctic island final 12 months has been confirmed to have been killed by hen flu.
Christian Lydersen, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, told the Guardian {that a} German laboratory carried out exams, which confirmed the walrus was contaminated. The exams couldn’t decide whether or not the flu pressure was H5N8 or the dominant H5N1 pressure.
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Lydersen mentioned that a few of six different walruses who died final 12 months within the Svalbard islands can also have had hen flu. Marine mammals together with a polar bear, sea lions, and seals have already died from the virus. The probably route of an infection is thru the animals feeding on contaminated birds.
An animal pandemic
More than half a billion farmed birds have been slaughtered because the begin of outbreaks of the “highly pathogenic” H5 strains in efforts to comprise the virus. But it has nonetheless unfold by way of wild animal populations, killing thousands and thousands of birds, notably seabirds. At least 26 species of mammals have additionally caught the virus.
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No area seems to be secure from its unfold. Not solely has it reached the Arctic, however penguins within the Antarctic have been additionally discovered to be contaminated final 12 months.
Farming birds for meat and eggs is the primary perpetrator of this example, in response to consultants. Thijs Kuiken, a comparative pathologist at Erasmus University Medical Centre within the Netherlands, told the BBC that “High pathogenic avian influenza is typically a poultry disease, which doesn’t occur in the wild. What’s unusual now, is this particular type has spilled into wild birds and this has allowed it to spread worldwide.”
