ANP
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 13:56
Dozens of cats have been infected with bird flu in Poland, the World Health Organization reports (WHO). In thirteen regions of the country, 29 animals were found to be infected with H5N1, a variant that spreads via wild migratory birds. None of the people who came into contact with the cats got sick.
According to the WHO, it is not new that cats and other mammals sometimes become infected with bird flu. It is the first time that the organization has registered so many infections in domestic cats spread over such a large area within a country.
The risk of people becoming ill after being exposed to the infected cats is assessed by the WHO as low. For cat owners or people who come into contact with the animals through their work, such as veterinarians, that risk is “low to moderate”. In the latter assessment, the organization assumes that someone is not wearing proper protective clothing, such as a face mask and gloves.
Cause investigated
At the end of last month, Polish authorities reported unusual deaths of a total of 45 cats. Tests last week showed that 29 of them had bird flu. Fourteen animals had to be killed, eleven others died from the virus. Some of them had symptoms such as difficulty breathing and bloody diarrhoea. There were also neurological symptoms such as paralysis and epilepsy.
It is still unclear how the cats became infected, which is still being investigated. A possible explanation is indirect contact with a sick bird or eating it.
Bird flu originated 25 years ago in geese and ducks on farms in China. Then it jumped to wild birds, and they spread it all over the world. In 2003, the Netherlands was confronted with a massive outbreak of bird flu. That year, 30 million chickens and other poultry were killed.
Since October 2021, Europe has been dealing with the largest bird flu outbreak ever. H5N1 is a variant that spreads via wild migratory birds and has now been identified in birds on almost all continents. “Only in Australia and Antarctica are no known cases of birds infected with this variant,” virologist Thijs Kuiken previously explained.
The virus reaches poultry farms via wild birds, and thus to people. The chance that the virus will mutate in such an infection into a variant that is contagious among humans is still small, emphasized virologist Marion Koopmans at the beginning of this year in the NPO Radio 1 program News and Co. The zoonoses expert council, which advises the Dutch government on this, also says that the risk of spreading the virus among the population in the Netherlands is low.
Van der Poel therefore found it reassuring that there are no indications yet that this specific virus variant can be transmitted from person to person. “But we have to keep an eye on its spread and try to get it better under control.”
Symptoms
Bird flu almost never occurs in humans, writes the RIVM. If someone becomes infected, that person has the same symptoms as with the flu:
fever headache and muscle ache cough eye inflammation
In birds, the first complaints are “general marked lethargy”. They don’t make any noise either. For example, the following complaints follow:
breathing problems diarrhoeaeye inflammation sudden death
2023-07-17 11:56:56
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