State agencies work to combat spread
A month ago, avian influenza, or bird flu, was found in a commercial duck farm on Long Island, leading to the deaths of over 100,000 birds. The discovery, coming shortly after the disease was found in birds in Putnam County, led to fears of widespread outbreaks.
While the disease has continued to kill wild birds, the outbreak at the Crescent Duck Farm has so far been the only case of the disease at a large bird farm in New York. And in the weeks since the Putnam and Long Island cases were discovered, there’s only been two others confirmed in smaller backyard flocks: one with 50 birds in Ulster County, and a flock of 15 ducks and geese near Syracuse.
H5N1 — the avian influenza strain being found in the U.S. — was also discovered during testing at live bird markets in New York City’s outer boroughs earlier this month. Those markets were temporarily shut down by the state.
Elizabeth Wolters, a deputy commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, noted that farms routinely test for diseases such as avian influenza. In New York City, “we were able to get in, quarantine the market, shut it down, get it cleaned up.”
It’s not unexpected that bird flu has ramped up across the nation over the past few months, said Kevin Hynes, the wildlife health program leader for the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Colder weather favors the transmission of the virus, much like it does for human influenza.
This is also the time of year when migratory waterfowl are moving through New York. With the country having lost half of its wetlands over the past 20 years, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, migrating birds have less secluded places to land and end up resting closer to poultry farms and commercial flocks.
Waterfowl can be infected but not get sick, Hynes said. “They’re flying around infected; they’re shedding the virus through their saliva and their feces, and it goes into the water,” he said. “Other birds are exposed to it that way, either other wild birds or domestic poultry that might be in your backyard or at a free-range poultry operation.”
The disease’s relatively low impact on local commercial poultry can be credited to the departments of Environmental Conservation, Agriculture and Health working together, said Wolters. There has been concern at the national level after the Trump administration fired officials who were working on bird flu and accusations that research about the disease has been withheld by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but Wolters said her contact with federal agencies has been smooth.
“We haven’t seen any changes to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s response,” she said. “To date, all the information on the detections continues to be posted on its website. It’s the same with the genetic sequencing” the agency has been sharing with researchers.
As of Feb. 20, there have been no confirmed human cases of bird flu in New York, nor have any dairy cows been affected. There has been only one confirmed death, in Louisiana, and many people infected have responded well to antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu. The symptoms of avian influenza are similar to those of seasonal influenza, although many people infected with avian influenza also get pink eye.
Another reason for cautious optimism: Although H5N1 has been detected in New York state in mammals such as bobcats, racoons, foxes and possums, it hasn’t been detected in pigs. That’s significant because pigs are genetically similar to humans, said Hynes. “Pigs can be infected with human seasonal influenza viruses,” he said. “If they’re already infected with that, and they get a new infection at the same time of avian influenza, that could change the viruses’ genetic material, and you could end up with a new strain that could potentially be very virulent to people and spread to people in an airborne fashion.”
As of now, avian influenza has not spread person-to-person. But every time a person — or, according to Hynes, a pig also infected with human seasonal influenza — gets infected, it gives the virus another opportunity to mutate into a strain that would have that capability. “That would be a very serious problem if it was a version of the virus that had a high mortality rate,” he said. In fact, that is how COVID-19 developed: It first spread between animals, then to humans, and then mutated to spread between people.
