NEW YORK (AFP) - Four swans found dead in Massachusetts had the bird flu virus, authorities said on Wednesday, stressing that the strain was not dangerous to humans.
'Four of the swans were tested positive of H1 avian flu,' a spokesman for the state's fisheries and wildlife department said. 'It's a low pathogenic form. This form of avian flu is not harmful for humans.' The strain is commonly carried by birds, he added.
The most dangerous form of avian influenza is the H5N1 virus, which has infected about 600 people since appearing in 2003, killing one in two.
Outbreaks of H5N1 have been met with mass slaughter of at-risk livestock.
1 comment:
There are numerous avian flu viruses circulating among wild birds at any given time, most of which are of no more significance that the common flu viruses that infect humans annually. So what they say about the swans possibly not having died from the flu virus is plausible. On the other hand, what tissues did they test? Because in humans a flu virus doesn't always show up in blood, right? If the deaths are due to an influenza, it still does not mean that this instance necessarily carries anywhere near the significance of the highly pathogenic H5 overseas. Although, the fact that they did not reveal the subtype implies that there's something about it that would raise perhaps a single eyebrow: either low-pathogenic H5N1 which has in fact been circulating in this hemisphere, or the H3N8 that was found to be killing seals in nearby Cape Cod.
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