The numbers are as impressive as they are shocking: 10,000 dead cranes in Israel, hundreds of geese and swans in France, thousands of red knots found dead in the Netherlands, several hundred dead pelicans in Greece. In Norway, ten percent of the barnacle geese may have died, in other countries significant stocks of endangered species. In total, almost half a million wild birds have died since autumn last year. The death rates in poultry farms are even higher: According to the journal “Nature”, almost 80 million birds – such as chickens, geese and turkeys – have had to be culled since October 2021.
The reason for the mass extinction bears the succinct designation H5N1, also known as avian influenza, bird flu or avian influenza. While the focus is still on the coronavirus, an avian flu pandemic, a global plague, is raging without much public notice. The virus is now circulating on all continents except Australia, South America and Antarctica. Europe is particularly badly affected: According to the science magazine “Science”, more than 2800 outbreaks have been recorded in the past six months. The German Friedrich Löffler Institute spoke of the “strongest avian influenza epidemic ever”. In Austria, the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) registered 110 cases of infected wild or domestic poultry by mid-May, mainly in the east of the country. For a few months there was therefore a stable requirement. The subtype H5N1 could be detected in all Austrian cases.
Transmissions of H5N1 to mammals are extremely rare, but possible: it is known that cats, foxes, otters, seals, pigs and tigers, for example, can become infected. And what about people? As far as is known, only one person has contracted the virus in the current wave: a 79-year-old man in south-west England who contracted the virus from sick ducks last January.
But how is the situation to be assessed overall? Is bird flu a serious threat? And would it be conceivable that we are seeing the harbingers of another pandemic that will also affect human society?
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