Madison, Wis. – An unconventional border patrol in the Midwest is watching for a dangerous migrant that may be trying to enter the country thousands of miles away.
On Wednesday, agents will start searching their first detainees – wild birds from Alaska that may be harboring bird flu.
“The whole point is early detection,” said Scott Wright, one of the U.S. Geological Survey scientists involved in the effort.
“When West Nile virus started, nobody knew what was going on,” and the germ started killing people before scientists realized it had been killing birds, he said. With bird flu, “we have the advantage of being able to sit down and plan things out” to try to find it and prevent an epidemic, Wright said.
Tests will signal within a day whether the deadly H5N1 flu is present.
No one knows whether the virus that has ravaged poultry in Asia and spread to Africa and Europe will make its way to the United States or morph into a human super-flu. But controlling the disease in birds is one way to help ensure that it doesn’t, so scientists want to know if migrating birds have brought it with them.
“We know the specific sites in Alaska where wild birds arrive from Asia,” said Dr. Leslie Dierauf, director of the USGS’s National Wildlife Health Center.
“Almost to the day, we’re aware of what birds are coming and from where,” because birds in the Pacific flyway typically return to the very spot they left months before, she said.
This summer, scientists at the wildlife center expect to analyze more than 11,000 swabs from trapped, healthy birds plus about 4,000 dead birds, starting with 400 samples arriving today or Wednesday from 10 villages in Alaska where hunters recently shot migrating ducks and geese for food.
In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will test droppings from tens of thousands of birds around the country.
In a separate lab, “we’re going to deliberately infect wild birds with known quantities of virus,” virologist Hon Ip said.
That will tell them how easily the germ spreads from bird to bird and whether particular species are most vulnerable, as crows were to West Nile.
