Attributable to the Australian Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr Beth Cookson:
Testing at CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness has confirmed two presumed positive results for petrels, one found at Parry Beach in Denmark on Western Australia’s south coast and one found at Seabird, north of Perth.
The sequencing of the virus could not be determined for these cases, but the Western Australian Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development is treating them as a positive as a precautionary measure.
A range of factors can affect sequencing, particularly in wildlife samples from deceased animals.
There have now been 17 confirmed or presumed positive detections of H5 bird flu in Australia.
All of these have been individual wild seabirds found in coastal locations. All but one have been wild migratory seabirds.
There remains no evidence of any mass mortality events and there are no detections in poultry or in our agricultural production system.
The risk to human health remains low.
