Seven suspected new bird flu cases are ‘evidence of spread’ into Australian wildlife, experts warn

BirdLife Australia says discoveries of sick and dead local seabirds in South Australia show outbreak is ‘taking hold’

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South Australia has reported seven new suspected cases of deadly H5 bird flu , with experts warning it could be a sign the disease has begun spreading through local bird populations.

All seven birds are greater crested terns – a common local seabird – and were found on the Limestone Coast in south-eastern SA, with one found at Cape Jaffa, five around Southend Jetty near Beachport and one at Port MacDonald, just over 20km from the Victorian border.

BirdLife Australia’s chief executive, Kate Millar, said the discovery showed the outbreak was “now taking hold and is evidence of spread”.

“If we were in a bushfire scenario, those subantarctic birds that arrived with the disease initially were like the embers,” she said. “Now having it in crested terns, that’s the smoke.

“Governments have been saying it hasn’t spread – this is evidence of spread.”

The development follows two other confirmed cases of the disease in greater crested terns in South Australia at the weekend, including the first positive detection in metropolitan Adelaide.

If the CSIRO verifies the seven suspected cases, it will take the total number of cases in SA to 14 – 10 of those in local greater crested terns.

Of the five birds collected from Southend Jetty, four were sick and one was dead. The birds found at Cape Jaffa and Port MacDonnell were also dead.

South Australia’s primary industries minister, Clare Scriven, told reporters on Monday the development was concerning.

The government said analysis of samples sent to CSIRO would help determine whether the disease was spreading locally. The state’s chief veterinary officer, Dr Skye Fruean, said it was too early to say whether the five birds found around Southend Jetty were part of a cluster of infections.

Scriven said: “It is worth noting that these are in wild seabirds, and all the detections so far have been in wild seabirds. We don’t have any detections in poultry or the broader agricultural industry, which is encouraging.”

Fruean said the government was “stepping up monitoring” despite “already doing a huge amount of surveillance”. This would include targeted surveillance of areas frequented by greater crested terns.

“We continue to do our surveillance,” she said. “Until we get to the point of [it] being confirmed that we have spread through local birds spreading it between each other, then the situation doesn’t change.”

Millar said there would be additional concern as the spring breeding season approached. Some species would return to nesting sites, which are coastal breeding grounds where many birds gather in large groups.

“That’s when you get a real engine room of viral spread,” she said. “As increasing numbers of sick individuals come into contact with other types of birds, the disease can spread into other habitats, particularly wetlands.”

BirdLife said greater crested terns nested in colonies and roosted in large flocks, making them particularly vulnerable to H5 bird flu. They also interacted with other coastal and wetland species.

The organisation said the suspected SA cases were not far from colonies of endangered fairy terns that local communities and BirdLife Australia teams had worked to protect.

The federal agriculture minister, Julie Collins, said samples “have now been raced off to the CSIRO laboratory in terms of determining … whether or not that means that we have local transmission here in Australia”.

She reiterated: “At this time there are no mass mortalities.”

She added: “There is no evidence of any H5 bird flu in our poultry or agricultural systems, and the risk to human health remains low.”

Collins said it was “critically important not to pre-empt any of the data that we get from the CSIRO lab”.

The Invasive Species Council’s policy director, Carol Booth, said if the suspected cases represented local transmission, “we’re entering a very different phase of this outbreak”.

“Instead of isolated infected birds arriving on our shores, we’re potentially seeing the virus spreading through Australian wildlife,” she said.

The SA government urged anyone who saw a sick or dead bird to avoid touching the animal, record its location and report it to the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on 1800 675 888.