Good, solid article. Mainly about the research that will be going on. Quoted in its entirety and I know we are not supposed to do that.
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/14108724.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
"Will U.S. migration spread flu?
As birds take flight, so do fears
By Sandy Bauers
Inquirer Staff Writer
In coming weeks, many of the planet's birds will point their beaks northward in a vast migration to breeding grounds in higher latitudes.
Researchers are watching one group in particular - roughly 6.6 million birds of 42 species flying from Asia to Alaska - concerned that they will bring the virulent H5N1 strain of avian influenza.
This month, a government consortium is launching a $29 million campaign to capture and test as many as 100,000 birds in Alaska and throughout the United States, as other avian migrants head south.
The H5N1 flu has spread inexorably, creeping across three continents and infecting 177 people, 98 of whom died, the World Health Organization reported Monday.
Since the beginning of March, it has been found in a duck in Switzerland, a swan in Serbia-Montenegro, chickens in Albania, cats in Austria, a stone marten in Germany, and wild birds in Sweden.
The new fear is that, because Alaska is a global bird hub with interconnecting flyways, Asian species could infect Western Hemisphere species. The birds could then transport the virus south along the continent's major migratory routes, including the Atlantic flyway that follows the East Coast.
The flu spreads among birds through nasal and fecal secretions.
Scientists are also worried the virus may sneak in with smuggled birds, which has happened elsewhere, or cross over from Europe via transatlantic migratory birds.
Consider the tundra swan, which breeds on the Arctic tundra in Alaska and western Canada.
Right now, thousands are migrating through Pennsylvania, stopping briefly at the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, which spans the border of Lancaster and Lebanon Counties. Anywhere from 500 to 3,000 also winter there.
In mid-May, they will arrive on the Arctic coastal plain, where they could mix with, say, the king eider - some 200,000 of which migrate yearly between Asia and Alaska.
If a grazing swan ingests fecal matter from a contagious eider, the swan could be infected and then further the spread when it flies back south in the fall.
This scenario could play out among any number of East Coast species. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska reports that birds there migrate to every state in the union - canvasback ducks to New Jersey, Lapland longspurs to Pennsylvania, black-bellied plovers to Delaware, and semipalmated sandpipers to New York.
Overall, however, researchers have more questions than answers.
When will the flu arrive? Scientists shun alarmist cries of "Deadly bird flu approaching Alaska within the month!"They do, however, feel certain the day will come, probably sooner than later.
"A year ago we would have said if," said Leslie Dierauf, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center. Now,"we're saying when."
Researchers also don't know why this flu has turned deadly when many birds, especially waterfowl, harbor low-level flu viruses all the time. Scientists worry that such an unpredictable virus may mutate and trigger a human pandemic that could sicken millions.
But it's still not clear whether migratory birds are responsible for the virus' spread.
"We know migratory birds can catch the virus," said Bruce Woods, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage. "But we don't know whether most of the spread we have seen so far has been the result of the movement of migratory birds or poultry products and processing equipment, or some other vector."
Hon Ip, a virologist with the National Wildlife Health Center, notes that other avian flu viruses had different genetic fingerprints.
"The virologists say, 'Well, birds may fly back and forth, but whenever I check a North American bird, I never see an Asian virus,' " he said. "It looks like there's a biological barrier for the virus between continents."
Still, "the aftermath of having a bird come over and transmit it is severe," Ip said. "The risk is not zero, and the risk is what we want to monitor."
Later this year, as birds begin to migrate south, officials in the lower states plan to collect birds, swab their secretions, and release them. They also plan to collect 100,000 environmental samples - feces and water - and test them.
Meanwhile, by cross-referencing birds that could have been in flu areas with birds that have large populations migrating to Alaska, researchers have devised a hit list of 29 species to test there this spring.
They will be setting up diaphanous "mist nets" to catch birds in flight, plus other nets to trap birds that alight on beaches and waterfowl during their molt, when they cannot fly.
The goal is to detect the virus as early as possible, which Woods says is doable. "If there's a 1.5 percent occurrence of the virus within the sample population," he said, "we will have a 95 percent chance of spotting it." "
