Antarctica Bird Flu Crisis: H5N1 Virus Detected on White Continent

2024-02-28 19:46:34
The H5N1 virus, which has already wreaked havoc in South America, was detected for the first time on the White Continent on Friday February 23. A disaster for wild birds which risk being decimated by the pathogen.

It’s official: bird flu has reached Antarctica for the first time, have confirmed the Spanish authorities. The highly pathogenic H5N virus was detected on Friday February 23 in the corpses of two scavenger birds called skuas, near the Primavera base, an Argentine scientific research station located in the north of the peninsula.

These are the first confirmed cases on the continent itself, a sign that the outbreak, which has killed millions of wild birds worldwide, is spreading across the region, most likely through migratory birds. The virus was first reported in October in South Georgia, a British territory about 1,600 km from the Antarctic continent, then in the Falkland Islands, 970 km west of South Georgia. His victims? Gulls, skuas, terns, albatrosses or penguins. But also mammals: we observed massive mortality among elephant seals and sea lions. And similar devastation is at work on the other side of the globe, among Arctic wildlife populations. In December, it was documented that for the first time a polar bear had died from this infection. “There are numerous reports of highly pathogenic avian influenza affecting several species in Antarctic regions this season,” summarizes Matthew Dryden of the British Health Security Agency. It may not have been reported on the Antarctic continent until now due to difficulties in accessing and sampling wildlife.”

On the Antarctic Peninsula, dead birds discovered by Argentine scientists were sent for analysis to researchers at the Severo-Ochoa Molecular Biology Center in Madrid, who work at the Spanish Antarctic base on Deception Island. “The problem is how long it will be before [le virus] not transmitted to other species such as penguins. We need to monitor this, emphasizes Antonio Alcamí, of the Spanish National Research Council, who carried out the tests on the carcasses. I fear it could be transmitted to penguins. The skuas live quite close so there are many possibilities for transmission, but we will see.” A fear shared by Diana Bell, emeritus professor of conservation biology at the University of East Anglia, in the United Kingdom: “It seems unlikely that the penguins are not infected.”

Previous epidemic waves, in South Africa, Chile and Argentina, have shown that penguins are susceptible to the virus. In South America alone, more than 500,000 seabirds (penguins, pelicans and boobies in particular) have died from bird flu.

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