Migrating birds could carry avian flu out of Asia

WASHINGTON - The spread of the bird flu virus among migrating geese and other birds at a wildlife refuge in China means the birds could carry the devastating virus out of Asia into India, Australia, New Zealand and eventually Europe, scientists reported on Wednesday.

This makes avian flu even more of a global threat than it already is, the scientists said in reports published jointly by the journals Science and Nature. Health officials fear avian influenza could cause a pandemic of human disease.

At least 1,000 dead birds have been found at Lake Qinghaihu, a protected nature reserve in western China, according to two separate reports. U.N. scientists said last week the total number of dead birds in the region had topped 5,000.

“The occurrence of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus infection in migrant waterfowl indicates that this virus has the potential to be a global threat,” Jinhua Liu of China Agricultural University, George Gao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues wrote in their report in Science.

“Lake Qinghaihu is a breeding center for migrant birds that congregate from Southeast Asia, Siberia, Australia and New Zealand.”

The reports echo concerns voiced last week by the World Health Organization, which urged China to step up its testing of wild geese and gulls.

The outbreak was first detected about two months ago in bar-headed geese at China’s remote saltwater lake, which is a key breeding location for migratory birds that winter in southeast Asia, Tibet and India. The virus has hit that species the hardest, but also affects brown-headed gulls and great black-headed gulls.

The H5N1 strain, which affects ducks with little harm but which kills chickens, had not before been seen to transmit among wild birds. One of the symptoms observed in the animals was diarrhea, which could mean the virus would spread in contaminated water.

The latest outbreak of the virus that started in 2003 has killed 39 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia. The WHO has said the virus would kill millions of people worldwide if it acquires the ability to pass easily from human to human. So far it has not, but influenza is extremely prone to mutation.

If a bird flu virus infects a person who also carries a human flu virus, the result could be a hybrid bug that passes easily from person to person. “That’s the spark that sets off the forest fire of a global pandemic, and that’s what everyone is worried about,” said flu expert Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University.

The flu outbreak in migratory birds at Qinghaihu Lake “makes us ever more anxious this event could occur” because it suggests the virus could become more widespread, said Schaffner, who was not involved in the new studies.

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