Australia’s authorities stated on Sunday it will spend an additional 95 million Australian {dollars} ($64.13 million) to guard in opposition to a harmful chook flu pressure that has unfold via chook and mammal populations worldwide however not but reached the island continent.
Oceania is the final area of the world freed from the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b avian influenza that has killed lots of of thousands and thousands of birds and tens of 1000’s of mammals since showing in Asia, Europe and Africa in 2020, littering seashores with corpses and upending the agricultural trade.
Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister Julie Collins stated the brand new funding was further to greater than AU$1 billion being spent to bolster the nation’s biosecurity.
“This pressure of avian influenza presents an actual and vital risk to Australia’s agriculture sector,” Collins stated in an announcement.
Whereas the area is considerably protected by its geography — it’s off the migration routes of massive birds corresponding to geese that unfold an infection — the virus is shut, having reached Indonesia in 2022 and Antarctica final yr.
Scientists and officers say there’s a increased threat of it arriving in Australia with smaller migratory shore birds within the Southern Hemisphere spring, from September to November.
Earlier this yr, Australia handled three parallel outbreaks of chook flu however every concerned a unique pressure of the virus, none of which was the H5N1 sort.
“Impacts skilled this yr from outbreaks of different strains of excessive pathogenicity avian influenza spotlight the significance of continued funding in nationwide preparedness,” Collins stated.
