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ARCHIVED - Mutating bird flu spreads to mink farm in Galicia
Scientists in Spain fear that more lethal variants could jump to humans
Europe is in the midst of the worst avian flu epidemic in history which has already forced the slaughter of 50 million birds. Now, a new study focused on the Galician region of Spain sheds some worrying light on the ability of this deadly disease to spread not only from wild birds to domestic ones, but also from poultry to other farm animals.
The research paper, published in the European Journal on Surveillance, Epidemiology, Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases, examined how a bird flu outbreak close to a farm in Galicia mutated, before being transmitted to minks.
From here, the scientists warn, it’s not to far a stretch that more lethal variants could jump to humans.
The research was sparked by a major outbreak last autumn: dead seagulls and gannets began appearing en masse along the Galician coast and days later, American mink a few kilometres away at a farm near La Coruña started dying. The birds tested positive for avian flu, the minks, haemorrhagic pneumonia.
The disease decimated the mink population at the Carral farm, which dropped by 4.3% in just one week. On October 18, the regional government in Galicia ordered the slaughter of the 52,000 of the animals.
It turns out that mink are a kind of super spreader, capable of catching both bird and human flu. In the case of the fur farm in Galicia, the animals were infected with the “highly pathogenic” A(H5N1) avian flu virus.
“Given the concern about the susceptibility of mink to emerging viruses such as the H5N1 virus and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19), it is necessary to reinforce the culture of biosafety and bioprotection in this system, breeding and promoting the application of ad hoc surveillance programs for influenza A viruses and other zoonotic pathogens on a global scale," the researchers concluded.
Image: Archive
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