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Mahesh

28/03/24 09:51 AM IST

H5N1 bird flu

In News
  • H5N1 has infected over 150 wild and domestic avian species around the globe as well as dozens of mammalian species.
Bird flu
  • Bird flu, also known as avian flu, refers to an infectious viral illness that mainly infects and spreads among poultry and some wild birds.
  • There are different strains of bird flu virus, which have been circulating for a very long time among at least 100 bird species, including wild waterfowl, such as ducks and geese, without much harming them.
  • From time to time, a form of the flu virus jumps from wild birds to poultry farms, and replicates in cramped warehouses of farmed birds.
  • It then quickly evolves into a highly pathogenic flu virus that causes a larger wave of illness and death than usual among birds.
  • The currently circulating type of H5N1 is one such highly pathogenic flu virus.
  • It has “descended from a virus that caused an outbreak on a goose farm in Guangdong, China, in 1996.
  • That virus — one of a type of virus known as H5N1 — was highly pathogenic and killed more than 40 per cent of the farm birds it infected.
  • The new version of H5N1 first emerged in Europe in 2020 and then rapidly reached Europe, Africa, and Asia.
  • By late 2021, it had spread to North America and in the fall of 2022, it appeared in South America. In February 2024, the virus stormed through mainland Antarctica.
Impact of virus
  • Apart from the farm birds, the virus has severely impacted wild birds.
  • Some wild birds, which are already on the verge of extinction, have also been hit.
  • At least 21 of the endangered California condors have died from the virus in 2023 alone, which is nearly 6 per cent of the population of the roughly 330 birds that were believed to live in the wild as of the end of 2021, according to the US National Park Service.
  • The biggest concern is the spread of the virus among mammals, though.
  • Outbreaks among foxes, pumas, skunks, and both black and brown bears in North America have been reported. In Spain and Finland, farmed minks have been infected.
  • The worst affected are marine mammals. More than 20,000 sea lions and a handful of dolphins have died in Chile and Peru due to the infection.
  • There have been reports of deaths of seals on the east and west coasts of the US. Thousands of elephant seals have also been killed in Argentina.
  • Humans are also at risk but they rarely contract bird flu.
  • Most of the cases of human infection involve people who have come in contact with a large number of sick birds at poultry farms.
  • This means that humans are likely to get infected when there is a huge viral load.
Factors behind spread
  • The exact factors behind the large outbreaks of the bird flu are still largely unknown. Some scientists, however, suggest that one reason could be climate change.
  • According to studies, soaring global temperatures impact the behaviour of birds in such a way that it exacerbates the spread of the flu.
  • These birds are forced to move into new territories and mix with species that they usually don’t interact with, which possibly boosts the chances for the virus to spread even further.
  • Higher sea surface temperatures might also be at play.
  • For example, warmer sea temperatures near northern Chile have led to a fall in the forage fish population and that has made sea lions weaker and more susceptible to disease.
Source- Indian Express

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