Bird Flu Expected To Arrive In U.S. Soon
Bird flu expected to arrive in U.S. soon
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bird14.html
(Gold9472: It has to make a stop in South America, Mexico, and Canada first.)
April 14, 2006
WASHINGTON -- In about three weeks, waterfowl, shorebirds and songbirds will start arriving in Alaska to begin mating. That's when and where government scientists expect the first case of bird flu to show up in the Unites States.
To screen the birds for the deadly virus, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Alaska's Fish and Game Department are setting up more than 50 backcountry camps accessible mainly by float planes or boats.
$29 mil. program to test 100,000
More than 40 species of waterfowl and shorebirds are considered susceptible to infection by the H5N1 bird flu virus that has killed more than 100 people, mostly in Asia. It also has killed or led to the slaughter of more than 200 million chickens, ducks, turkeys and other domestic fowl in Asia, Europe and Africa.
Species migrating from Asia across the Bering Strait -- considered the most likely carriers of the H5N1 virus -- include eiders, pintails, geese, long-tailed ducks, dunlins, sandpipers and plovers. There's also concern about gulls, terns and falcons.
The surveillance program will cost $29 million. Rick Kearney, wildlife program coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, said it will collect and sample 100,000 birds -- 15,000 to 20,000 in Alaska alone -- and called it an early warning system for poultry producers and health officials in the lower 48 states.
''If we find it this summer, it could provide them with several weeks of warning,'' he said. ''We're looking in all places, but we're looking most intently in the place we most expect to find it, Alaska.''
After Alaska, surveillance priorities are a matter of geography: the Pacific flyway from the Canadian border to southern California and then east to the Central, Mississippi and Atlantic flyways.
