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Federal officials have granted emergency approval for a bird flu vaccine to be used in California condors, a US Department of Agriculture agency announced Tuesday.
The move comes after more than a dozen birds, which are critically endangered, recently died from the virus, known as H5N1. Worldwide, there are fewer than 600 California condors, which can have wingspans of nearly 10 feet. The emergency approval is an “effort to prevent additional deaths of these birds,” said the agency, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
It is not yet clear when California condors will begin to be vaccinated, but the effort will begin with captive birds, said Dr. Carlos Sanchez, chief veterinarian at the Oregon Zoo, which has a condor breeding program and plans to vaccinate some of the birds. . Condors will be closely monitored to ensure that the vaccine is safe and effective. “But as you can imagine, all of this has to happen quickly to avoid losing more birds,” he said.
Why It Matters: Condors are high risk.
The virus was first detected in a California condor that was found dead in late March. Since then, 20 more condors have died and four additional condors are now in rehabilitation facilities, according to the federal agency. The virus has been confirmed in 15 of the birds.
Condors appear to be “very susceptible” to the virus, Dr Sanchez said. “Once they get it,” he said, “they tend to have high mortality.”
the California condor population dropped precipitously during the 20th century; in the 1980s, fewer than 30 birds remained. In the decades since, captive breeding programs have helped the population recover. If the virus becomes more common in the condor population, it can erase this progress, Dr. Sanchez said: “We are talking about the possibility of a catastrophic collapse of the conservation project.”
Background: A new version of an old threat.
The H5N1 virus was first detected in China in 1996. Since then, various versions of the virus have circulated in wild birds and caused repeated outbreaks in poultry. A new version of the virus arrived in North America in late 2021. Since then, the virus has spread rapidly throughout the United States, causing the largest bird flu outbreak in the country’s history and killing nearly 60 million farmed birds.
It also took a far heavier toll on wild birds than previous outbreaks. It has been detected in more than 6,700 wild birds – a figure that is certainly underestimated – in every state except Hawaii and has caused the death of wild birds worldwide.
It has also repeatedly spilled into mammals and caused some human infections, mostly in people known to have had close contact with the birds. The virus is best suited to birds, and the threat to the general public remains low, officials said. But scientists have long worried that the virus could evolve in a way that could easily spread between people.
What’s next: Officials are considering a broader bird vaccination campaign.
The vaccine is authorized for emergency use only in California condors. The small size of the existing California condor population will allow the vaccination program to be closely monitored, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said.
But the size and scope of the current outbreak has prompted officials to consider a mass poultry vaccination campaign. USDA scientists have been testing many potential poultry vaccines and say some results could be available this spring.
The state could see more animal outbreaks in the coming weeks as infected wild birds migrate north for the summer.
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