Is anybody who is worried about bird flu also attracted to ID?
H5 Detected on Farm Duck in British Columbia
Recombinomics Commentary
November 18, 2005
Preliminary tests show that a strain of H5 bird flu has been found in a farm duck in British Columbia's Fraser Valley.
B.C. government officials say they are not sure which strain of the H5 avian bird flu was found in the duck.
The farm where the duck was found has been quarantined. Officials won't reveal the exact location of the farm, but say it is located in the central Fraser Valley near Abbotsford.
Officials say the bird showed no signs of avian influenza and won't reveal why it was pulled from a processing plant.
Swab samples from the duck are on their way to a Winnipeg lab for testing. Results could take up to 48 hours.
The above comments are cause for additional concern. Wild birds that were swabbed in August as part of a Canadian banding study tested positive for H5. A remarkable 24% of the birds tested in British Columbia were positive. 14 strong positives were sent to Winnipeg for testing along with 28 H5 positives from Quebec and 5 from Manitoba. Although testing for HPAI is routine and H5N1 in wild birds from Asia have been well characterized, Canada has still not released the results from the H5 wild birds.
Media is told that the isolates are mixtures and require cloning, but a sequence across the HA cleavage site would determine if there is any HPAI H5N1 in the birds.
The above comments indicate that HPAI on the commercial samples were be tested in 48 hours to determine if the H5 is HPAI. If the HA cleavage site contains RRRKKR, then the isolate will not only be HPAI, but it will also almost certainly be H5N1 closely related to the Asian H5N1 sequences from wild birds at Qinghai Lake. Novosibirsk, and Mongolia.
The H5 determinations on the wild birds are long overdue. Sequencing across the HA cleavage site does not require cloning.
It is time for Canada to stop stalling and release the data.
Time to shut off the border, maybe?