Amid a string of suspected avian flu outbreaks in central and southern Taiwan, the nation’s first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus subtype H5N8 was confirmed yesterday, while several goose farms in Yunlin County were reportedly hit by a type of the virus’ H5N2 strain that is also new to the nation.
The Council of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine yesterday released preliminary results of inspections at 24 poultry farms in the affected areas, which indicated that four goose farms in Yunlin and one Pingtung-based facility raising layer ducks had been affected by the H5N2 strain, while one in Chiayi County had been struck with H5N8 — a subtype of the avian flu virus that causes respiratory symptoms in poultry, decreases their egg yields and often leads to large-scale deaths among the birds.
Bureau Director-General Chang Su-san (張淑賢) said the new H5N2 strain is likely a hybrid of the H5N8 virus found in South Korea last year and the H5N2 subtype in China’s Jilin Province in 2011, as the H5 and N2 proteins sampled in the newfound virus have very similar genome sequences to the previously discovered viruses.
Photo courtesy of the Changhua County Animal Disease Control Center
Chang said that the H5N8 strain could have been carried into the nation by migratory birds.
The outbreaks came after the bureau confirmed last Monday that a farm on Pingtung County’s Dawu Mountain (大武山), which raises layer chickens and since last month has reported sporadic deaths among its birds, had been hit by H5N2, resulting in the culling of about 120,000 chickens.
“The affected farms have reported mortality rates ranging from 20 percent to 90 percent, which is very high,” Chang said.
Meanwhile, the estimated death toll of geese in Yunlin and Chiayi counties has soared past 21,000, after eight goose farms in Chiayi yesterday morning reported about 10,000 sudden deaths.
“At present, local authorities plan to exterminate 8,500 geese and 7,000 layer ducks at the affected farms to contain the infections,” Chang said.
The extermination efforts were already under way as of last night, with the Chiayi County Agriculture Department culling 1,567 geese on a farm in Dalin Township (大林), where more than 3,000 geese had died from H5N2.
Citing research conducted in Germany, National Taiwan University professor of veterinary medicine Lai Shiow-Suey (賴秀穗) warned of the possibility of poultry-to-human transmission, saying that it is a “highly likely” scenario if the H5N8 virus undergoes mutations as a result of mixing with H5N2.
The H5N8 strain affects all poultry, including chickens, geese and ducks, and has been responsible for avian flu outbreaks around the world over the past year, including in Japan, South Korea, Germany, the UK and the US, he added.
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